No Doodles Allowed

"For neurodivergent individuals, the fear of being perceived can feel all-encompassing, consuming one’s thoughts and influencing behavior in nearly every social situation."

"The Fear of Being Perceived in Neurodivergent People." NeuroSpark Health. Accessed September 26, 2025. https://www.neurosparkhealth.com/blog/the-fear-of-being-perceived-in-neurodivergent-people.

I have a whole lot of things I would like to blog about today, but lately I'm having trouble getting motivated to do anything that requires a lot of thought. So today how about a random memory of an experience that neutodivergent people might be able to relate to? 

I was in college for about eleven thousand years because it was a struggle bus for me. In community college I was required to take a health class. 

I'm a major doodler. I'm a major fidgeter, actually.  I cannot sit still. Some part of me has to be moving at all times. I need something to be stimulating my brain. When I was in school, from kindergarten through my graduation from college, any worksheet or notebook I owned was covered with doodles. Sometimes I would just draw a random shapes and color them in. The very act of coloring with a juicy pen is a real sensory delight for me. In fact, in some of my lecture classes, I would just color in lines of my notebook paper with different colors of glitter gel pens. It helped me focus and it didn't bother anyone. 

Well, almost anyone. 

So this health class. Taught by a man who was surely a former high school jock, very full of himself, very disgusted by anybody who didn't work out on a regular basis. 

Like most classes, we would have a unit of instruction and then there would be a written test. Whenever I took any written test that wasn't one of those Scantron ones, I would usually doodle and draw in the margins of the paper while I was thinking about each question. Doodling could also give me a little sensory break between questions.

The first time I took a test in this class, when my test paper was handed back to me by the teacher, he pointed to the doodles and said, "What is this supposed to be, extra credit?"

I laughed politely and didn't think anymore about it. 

The second time I took a test in this class, when the teacher handed it back he told me in a low voice, tapping his finger on the paper, "If I see this kind of thing again, you failed the test." 

I cannot stand being reprimanded. Any neurodivergent people, can you relate to this? For me it comes from a lifetime of knowing the expectation was to never cause any trouble to anyone or give any adult outside of my nuclear family a reason to complain about me... and then always, no matter how hard I tried, causing trouble and giving adults a reason to complain about me. 

The shameful feeling that flooded me. The embarrassment. The sick feeling. The impulse that I just wanted to run out of the classroom and never return. All I could do was nod my head, unable to even make eye contact. I probably mumbled, "Sorry." The incredible shame of just being me. It was a physical feeling. Just sitting here writing about it, I can feel it like it was yesterday. 

Did I hurt anyone by doodling on my paper? No. Was I doodling swears, slurs, or other offensive material? No... Just random hearts and stars and maybe sketches of Snoopy. Yet that horrible feeling that I had unknowingly misbehaved, once again, and caused an authority figure to have to talk to me? I wanted to die. 

And for the teacher it was probably just a tiny, tiny moment. It was his class and he had every right to demand that people follow his instructions very, very specifically. If I had told him the effect his admonishment had on me, he probably would have called me a snowflake, or whatever version of that was something people said in the early 2000s. 

Just one small example of why everyday is filled with anxiety for me. Just by being myself, just by living my minute-to-minute life, I can break a social rule and get reprimanded. If somebody hates it when people are late, it's my responsibility to never ever ever be late when they are involved. If somebody doesn't like to be interrupted, I need to be very very careful to never under interrupt them. If there is a certain word somebody doesn't like... For example, I knew somebody who didn't like me to say, "Uh-oh" in a joking way because saying that should only be for when something was terribly wrong... Then it will be my responsibility to be vigilant about the words that come out of my mouth so that I don't cause them a moment of irritation. 

Yet as hard as I try, just by being me I always end up showing up late, learning stuff out, saying uh-oh in a joking way while playing with a child, and doodling on my paper without thinking about it. 

What is the point of this post? It's an explanation of how, for me, and maybe other neurodivergent people, being out in the world is like walking through a field of eggshells with landmines underneath them. 

Adult Children of Alcoholics

My life is full of therapy. In addition to my regular 1:1 therapy ( which is technically 1:2 therapy because there is a horse) I am in a life skills group, and a recovery circle for people with mental health and/ or addiction challenges. And lately, multiple people in my groups have suggested that I try a 12 step group as well. 

Most 12 step groups are for people with addiction issues. I've never struggled with those. My sensory issues actually protected me in this way. I could never cope with the tastes, smells, sensations, and physical discomfort most substance come with. But there are some 12 step programs that are for people who have had addicts in their lives. 

My choices were basically Al-Anon, Codependents Anonymous, and Adult Children of Alcoholics. I have been to Al-Anon before, and personally, it felt to me like trying to choke down very dry toast with nothing to drink. I know lots of other people find it helpful, but for some reason, I just didn't. The message seemed to be, "Quit nagging alcoholics, and worry about yourselves." 

I tried Codependents Anonymous, but I wasn't sure about it. In the meetings I went to, the message from many of the people who shared seemed to be, "If someone has problems, cut them out of your life so they don't drag you down with them." Story after story ended with, I no longer speak to those people, and I'm much happier." But I'm in no mood to start cutting people out of my life. 

So I decided to try Adult Children of Alcoholicss, which is also geared towards people who grew b up in any sort of dysfunctional home, even if nobody was addicted to anything. 

By all accounts, I am the one who caused most of the dysfunction in my family. This is backed up by plenty of research. Google "autism + dysfunctional families" and you will find lots of articles about how autistic children make life terribly difficult for their parents and neurotypical siblings. But since I do fit the description on the program's website, I decided to give it a try.

Unfortunately, we don't have ACOA in my city. The nearest meeting is in another city, in another state in fact. Depending on traffic, it can take anywhere from 16 minutes to an hour to get there. 

But I made the journey. That alone felt like a big success, because I don't usually like to go to these types of things alone. My Outlaw Brother used to go with me, but now he has a family that takes up most of his time. So I went alone.

It wasn't stellar, but it was pretty good.

The only reason it was less than stellar was because of me. I have trouble sitting quietly and listening for long amounts of time. Or any amount of time, really. At my other groups, we sit around a table, so I can color while I listen, and that is considered acceptable. But at the ACOA meeting, it was just chairs arranged in a circle. It didn't help that the chairs were uncomfortable. I fidgeted and squirmed the whole time, feeling like I had restless legs in my entire body. 

Plus, it's hard for me to pay attention to what people are saying. I have zero control over my attention span. I try very hard to hook onto what they're saying, but my brain is like an unruly toddler who runs across the room every time I glance away. This happens to me everywhere, but it's especially frustrating when it's something you actually want to listen to. 

The popcorn style sharing was impossible for me as well. In my other groups. either we go around the table to take turns speaking, or we do it in random order but still make sure everyone has a turn. 

But in this group, if you want to speak, you just blurt out, "Hi, my name is ___,"  and the en you start t talking. Everyone else seemed proficient at this. 

Not me. I couldn't do it. It takes me a while to formulate my words. By the time I would have gathered my courage to say something, someone else would already be talking. Every. Single. Time. By the end, I had given up on even trying. 

On the positive side, I did get something out of the meeting. The topic was self doubt. Over and over, people talked about how they never felt like they were good enough. They had learned in their families that they would always fall short of others' expectations. 

I could definitely relate to that. Even though other people had fallen short of expectations like, " Make sure your younger siblings have food to eat and clothes to wear, and get them to school on time, even the ough you yourself are only 10," and the expectations I failed at were things like, "Act like a normal kid your age," I could still relate. 

What I took away from it was, I don't have to meet anyone else's expectations or requirements in order to be good enough. I just have to do whatever is manageable for me at any given time. 

ACOA might not be ideal for me, but it's worth giving it a chance. I ordered the red book, which is the same concept as the AA "Big Book." And I will keep going back. 

I Was Born a Stranger Thinking Out Loud In a Foreign Tongue

This looks like me!
But it's actually a stock photo. 

"Communication differences, sensory sensitivities, and unfamiliarity with neurotypical social norms are common challenges that can make forming and maintaining friendships difficult for Autistic people."

Edwards, Chris, and Abbey Love. “Friendship, Loneliness and Belonging in Autistic People.” Reframing Autism. Accessed September 12, 2025. https://reframingautism.org.au/friendship-loneliness-and-belonging-in-autistic-people/

One comment made by a lot of people who meet me is that I'm almost always around guys, and not around a lot of women. Actually some people phrase it as, "You like to spend time with men," which sort of gives me the heeby-jeebies. I usually just think of them as guys, or dudes, or sometimes brothers. 

Part of the reason is that I'm not often accepted the way I am, by females. They see me as another female, so they wonder why I'm not more like them. Why don't I carefully style my hair each morning using various tools? Why are my clothes always dirty and the opposite of trendy... And why don't I show more skin? A grown woman should not have her breasts blocked by bib overalls. Why don't I wear makeup? Why aren't I neat and clean? Where are my acrylic nails? Carrying a loaded backpack instead of a purse is strange. Why don't I have a boyfriend? 

The assumption seems to be that I should want to be more like them, but I just don't know how. So they focus on trying to help me get there. The truth is just that none of these things are me. I'd be wearing a costume and trying to play a part. 

Guys, on the other hand, often just accept me as a different kind of mystery. Sometimes they are curious and ask questions, but not in a judgemental way. 

Honestly, I don't completely relate to either women or men. I feel like I relate more to animals than to people at all. Like, wouldn't life be better if we all had fur and didn't need clothes, and nobody had to worry about looking or acting any certain way? 

I wonder if men who aren't as masculine as they're expected to be feel the same way, but the opposite? If you're a not-super- masculine dude, do other men seem uncomfortable around you, or try to get you to act more masculine? And do women tend to accept the genuine version of you? 

What about non- binary people? Does anyone at all accept them fully?

At any rate...Currently, the two people I enjoy spending most of my time with are both men. The first one, I call my bonus dad. The other, I call my brother. This is not, by the way, because I'm trying to replace my actual family. It is because words are important to me and I like them to be right. My connection with some people is so strong, that to call them "friends" feels wrong. Even "best friends" is too weak. I love them in a forever sort of way. So they're family. Most people are fine with just referring to all non-legally-related people as friends, because the feeling of the relationship is what's important to them, not the specific word. But words have always been the things I understand most. 

I have never had regular friends that you hang out with but maybe not every single day... Especially not friendships based on mutual interests and favorite activities. In school, my friendships were based on whatever kids in my grade were also unpopular and got bullied. Either the teachers would stick us together, or we would find each other, standing alone on the playground or in the gym. 

Those by-chance friendships can be really strong. But I wonder what it would be like to make a friend at a dog park and start doing dog activities together. (That's just an example. I don't even have a dog. But I do like dogs. So I would still do dog activities if the hypothetical friend wanted to.)

My bonus dad and my outlaw brother are willing to do activities and go places with me. They grin and bear it because they know I probably won't go alone. Sometimes they even end up having fun! Like when I used to get them to color with me, or when we walked down Peacock Lane. But these aren't things they'd ever choose to do if I didn't ask them. 

I just don't have a lot of regular friends. I realize this could be because it usually takes me a long time to stop being anxious around people. For many people, it takes a long time to be completely comfortable around someone. But for me, often, I'm actually fearful around most people. By the time I feel all the way safe with someone, our lives have become pretty much intertwined. 

How do you make new friends and hang out with them without having to be nervous at all times?  I will cancel plans with all shorts of people I'd like to spend time with, because the more the idea of hanging out becomes a reality instead of a hypothetical idea, the more anxious I get. Eventually the anxiety overwhelmed me, and I escape from it the only way how... By running away from it.

PS... I'll be really excited if anyone knows the song the title is part of. Without asking the Internet. 

PSS... I call him my outlaw brother because people ask me if we're actually legally related. I don't know if we're related, because I haven't gotten him to do a DNA test yet. So here's my outlaw brother. 

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers To the Right

As a kid in school, one thing I got in trouble for a lot was failing to pay attention. Part of it was that I couldn't control what I paid attention to. It was like trying to drive a car without a steering wheel. If something caught my attention and resonated with me, I'd be riveted. But if it was something I found boring and useless... like memorizing multiplication facts... I couldn't stop my mind from wandering. 

But often I had a different problem. If it involved reading, art, or something else I liked, my mind was full speed ahead. So you remember in school when the teacher would have kids take turns reading? If it wasn't your turn to read aloud, you were supposed to read a long silently. 

It was excruciating to me. I was hyperlexic and I would compulsively read everything around me. By the time some other kid had plodded his way, sound by sound, through page 12, I'd be on page 82. Then the teacher would call on me to read aloud, but I'd have no idea where the rest of the class had paused. 

I never felt like I was smarter than the other kids. But I definitely felt like I was faster than them. If something held my interest, I was always ten steps ahead. 

I get that feeling a lot lately, as an autistic adult who uses a lot of services. I have lots of  people whose jobs are to help me. And the process is often excruciatingly slow. 

For example, there's the job coach who told me to show up at 2:30 today at the place where I've signed up to volunteer. He said I needed to complete the volunteer orientation. The problem was that I was sure I'd ask really don't the orientation back in July. Then my job coach went on bereavement leave for several weeks, and when he got back he had forgotten that if don't it.

So I showed up at this place today. The job coach got there before me, but he was talking on the phone in the parking lot. So I went ahead in... And was told that, sure enough, I had already finished the orientation and was ready to start volunteering. 

In fact, the staff had no record of me having an appointment, even though the job coach had told me he'd made one for me. When the job coach came in, the staff had to explain this to him several times. They also said he'd called several times to ask about things, and they had told him they couldn't give him answers because I hadn't signed an ROI yet. He couldn't have made an appointment for me. Yet, here we were. 

There are always more. The endless intake workers who all me personal questions things in a monotone voice and then make me wait while they type their shortened (and often incorrect) version into their computer. And the case manager who asked me if I took a shower or ate breakfast, and also why female cats needed to be spayed, asked me if I was enjoying young equine therapy, and then informed me that she was going to have me start seeing some guy named Juan in an office instead. The peer support workers who tell me how important it is to be on time to my meetings with them, but then when I get there on time I  have to wait 20 minutes for them to be ready. The doctor who explain my upcoming surgery to me who, when I asked the question, "Do you stay overnight in the hospital for this or do you go home?" responded by explaining to me that the hospital has beds for doctors to sleep in if they need to. Not to mention the "caregivers" who sit on my couch and watch me with blank looks on their faces, unlike in the agency's commercial where smiling caregivers help people make meals and do art projects. 

The hard part is that I've always ways been interested in helping people, and a lot of these people have jobs that I've also thought about pursuing. I might even be good at some of these jobs too, except that my brain just won't let me. I wouldn't be able to handle the long hours, excessive case loads, and the demand for perfection in record keeping and organization. So instead, they are the professionals, and I am always on the receiving end of the services. It's gotten even weirder lately, now that Manny of the people helping me are a decade younger than me.

I'm not trying to sound ungrateful. I am grateful that these services exist, that they are mostly free, and that I can use them. But sometimes I'm just not sure if they're really helping me or if I'm just spinning my proverbial wheels. 

All of these services are voluntary, by the way. I could cancel all of them, and probably have a much less stressful life. But I keep trying, everything I can find, hoping I'll find the answers that will make me feel better, make my mind work right, and set me free. 

What Is Autistic Burnout, Anyways? Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

So let's say you're an autistic person with level one support needs. Except this blog entry is already getting long, so I don't want to go into all of the symptoms and issues that an autistic person deals with. So let's just use the idea of a blind person, because it might be easier for people to visualize. (No pun intended.) You are a blind person and you've been told that in order to survive, you're going to need to go out and get a job. But in order to get a job, you're going to have to make people feel comfortable around you, and the only way to really do that is to convince them that you can see.

I know that this would probably be impossible in real life, but remember this is a metaphor for what an autistic person would go through. 

So you know you have to get a job in order to survive. And because all living creatures have an instinct to try to survive, you figure out how to do it. You find strategies for every single aspect of your life, so that you can appear to be sighted. 

But remember that because you're pretending to be sighted, cannot have any support or special tools. You can't have a white cane, you can't have a seeing eye dog, you can't use braille, you can't use clocks that say the time out loud, you can't be observed touching things around you too much... You have to stay focused all the time once acting like you're sighted. 

For some people this happens at home as well. So you come home from a long day of pretending to be sighted, and you're exhausted. But your family members, although they do know that you are blind, find it really inconvenient that you're blind and they don't want to make any provisions or allowances for you. So you are expected to behave in the same ways that all the sighted people in your family act and do all the things that the sighted people do. 

If you slip up or start to get frustrated, people get impatient with you. They call you lazy and selfish. They say things like, "Everyone has problems. What makes you think that being blind is any more difficult than our problems?" and, "You're just not trying hard enough. If you really wanted to, you could do these things." Or, "Why do you have to make everything about the fact that you're blind? It's like you're obsessed with being blind." Or, "You know you're not really a blind person. You are a person with blindness. Remember you can do anything anyone else can." 

As time goes on, can you imagine that you might start to get depressed or feel a sense of despair? The pressure gets more and more intense. You may feel deep shame about who you are, because you've been told all your life that you should be able to do these things easily, and so you just must be a failure if you're struggling this much. 

You start to feel fatigued all of the time, from trying to do the right thing and not upset people. Every single thing you do requires a strategy, a plan, a way to make it look like you've got it under control. When you wake up, you usually feel more tired than you did when you went to bed. 

Your other senses become heightened. You may have always had sensitive hearing, taste, smell, and touch, but now the world seems to have been turned on to top volume. All of the sounds hurt your ears. All of the smells give you a headache or make you nause. Everything tastes so strongly and doesn't even taste like it's supposed to. Your shoes feel like they're squeezing your feet and your shirt feels like 100 tiny needles touching your skin. 

You become more emotional. You're so used to feeling anxiety about trying to do the right thing, that now everything makes you anxious. The anxiety becomes debilitating. You become irritable with everything and everyone. Sometimes you just start crying your eyeballs out and you don't have a way to explain why. (Boy. does that make the people around you mad. They say you're acting like a child and trying to get attention.)

You start to have a lot of headaches and stomach aches. You've never really slept well, but now you toss and turn all night. To ease your anxiety, you find yourself rocking back and forth or pulling on your own hair. You always did these things to some degree, because they somehow help you feel more grounded in your body, but you could usually hide it when you were out in public. And now it seems like you're doing these things all the time. People are starting to notice. 

You even feel like you're having trouble thinking straight lately. It's like you're losing your memory little by little... Not all the time but a lot of the time. You have more troubles solving the kinds of problems that used to be able to solve, or dealing with situations you've worked through before. 

You're struggling so much at your job now. What is happening to you? You're going to have to find a way to fix this or you're going to lose your job. And if you lose your job you're going to end up homeless. It's even more difficult to be homeless when you're blind. You keep trying so hard but you keep messing up. No matter what you do you keep messing up. 

That's when you start to develop depression. The deep painful type of depression that makes you fall to your knees crying at night. It gets harder and harder to wake up in the morning. Trying to delay getting out of bed for as long as possible, you stopped taking showers. You stop paying so much attention to the outfits you pick out for work. And once you're at work, you're no longer trying so hard to trick people into thinking you're sighted. It's no longer worth it. 

You can't even buy your own groceries, for goodness sake. First of all the grocery store is excessively loud... Would they please stop yelling announcements into the speaker? And what is that incessant beeping noise piercing my eardrums?... And there's another strong smell around every corner. Plus half the time you get lost in there. 

You hate yourself so much, so incredibly much, because you know that you're supposed to be doing what all of these people around you are doing. These people who are your age and younger, and they're so successful. You failed it being successful. You tried your very, very, hardest, and you still failed. 

That is autistic burnout. 

I hope I've made some sort of sense! 

If you have any questions or thoughts, leave them in the comments! 

What IS Autistic Burnout, Anyways? (Part 1)

"Compared with adults in the general population, autistic adults are more likely to experience poor mental health,10,11 which can contribute to a greater risk for suicidal ideation, self-harm, and death by suicide."

Mantzalas, Jessica, Amanda L. Richdale, Anjali Adikari, Jennifer Lowe, and Cheryl Dissanayake.

"What Is Autistic Burnout? A Thematic Analysis of Posts on Two Online Platforms." Autism in Adulthood 4, no. 1 (2022): 52–65. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2021.0021.

Some people who read the description of this blog were wondering what I mean by "burnout." So I thought I would take this time to explain autistic burnout and my experience with it.

Autistic burnout, I'm pretty sure, specific to people with level 1 and 2 support needs. Here's why. People with level 3 support needs usually have very obvious disabilities. Having level 3 support needs means you probably need help with most aspects of taking care of yourself. An adult that I know who has level 3 support needs is unable to use the toilet, needs help bathing, is unable to communicate except by nodding or shaking her head, and generally just needs round the clock supervision in order to be safe. A person with level 3 support needs would not be told that they need to go get a full-time job and support themselves. There would be no question that the person has a disability. 

For autistic people with level 1 and 2 support needs though, there is a lot of pressure, beginning in preschool or elementary school, to just blend in and act "normal." Autism might be the only disability where there is so much pressure to appear and behave as if you don't have a disability. The most common therapy for autistic children is ABA, the purpose of which was originally to make children "indistinguishable from their peers." The goal was always that if an outsider walked into a classroom, they would not be able to pick out which child was autistic. 

Really, autism is the only disability I know of where people who have it are pressured to act like they don't have it. If someone has cerebral palsy and needs a wheelchair to move around, would they be told that they need to start learning to walk so that nobody can tell they have cerebral palsy? If someone is blind, would all of their therapy be centered around fooling people into thinking they're not blind? Of course not. That would be ludicrous. But that is what happens to most level one and level 2 support needs autistic people.

Of course, people with other disabilities hold jobs also. But certain allowances are usually made for their disability. For instance, if the bagger at the grocery store has Down syndrome, customers might automatically be a little more patient with him. (In fact, many people with Down syndrome have the opposite problem... People treat them like they are small children that cannot make their own decisions or take care of themselves, even if they are actually very capable.)

I think that there are two things that make it more acceptable for autistic people to be pressured to act like they're not autistic. First of all there are no physical characteristics of autism. When a baby is born there is not really any way to tell that they're autistic. Some forms of autism don't even become apparent until the child is two or three years old. 

Second of all, autism doesn't necessarily come with an intellectual disability. Most autistic people have normal or higher IQs. There've been plenty of autistic people with level 3 support needs, who weren't able to talk, that everybody assumed had severe intellectual disabilities. But when someone was able to find a way for them to communicate, it turned out that they were actually quite brilliant. They just didn't have a way to express everything they knew. I'm not saying that's the case for all autistic people with level 3 support needs. I'm just saying that autistic people can be very, very intelligent, and still find it extremely hard to get by in the world. 

So when people know our intelligence level is normal or higher, they expect us to be capable of doing anything that your typical person could do. Obviously everybody has different talents and abilities, but in general adults of average intelligence are expected to find something they can do well, and then do that thing for at least 8 hours a day in order to get money. When people meet someone who has average or higher intelligence and has working arms and legs, they expect that person to have a career. 

But autism affects different areas of the brain. The things we struggle with include being overwhelmed by sensory input, misunderstanding social cues, misunderstanding others expectations, difficulty communicating, trouble focusing attention on command, organization, time management, dealing with changes in routine, etc. 

Because of our intelligence we are sent out into the world expected to behaving perform like everybody else. 

Since this blog entry is getting long, I'm cutting it into two pieces for the sake of easier reading. You can either continue to Part 2 now, or read it later. 

(Continue to Part 2)

The Dreaded First Post

"What do we know about autism in middle and old age? Surprisingly little!"

- SPARK. 2024. "Autism in Middle and Old Age: What Do We Know, What Do We Need to Know?" Forbes EQ, August 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeseq/2024/08/01/autism-in-middle-and-old-age-what-do-we-know-what-do-we-need-to-know/

I have always written blogs about my experience of being autistic. I was blogging about being autistic back when my type of autism was called Asperger's. 

(Here's an interesting fact about that that a lot of people don't remember. Originally, what made the difference between being diagnosed with autism or Asperger's was whether the person learn to speak early or late. Most people with the most common type of autism learned to speak later in childhood than usual, or only learned to speak partially or not at all. People with Asperger's usually learns to speak earlier than children typically do, and often had advanced vocabularies at a young age. In the early 2000s, though, people began equating Asperger's with "high functioning autism." Some parents pushed for their autistic kids to be diagnosed with Asperger's instead of autism because it carried less stigma. It was more like saying your child had ADHD or a learning disability. Some parents of autistic children thought that if their children worked hard enough and had enough therapy, they could change their diagnosis to Asperger's. Eventually the DSM got rid of Asperger's completely and change the diagnosis to Autism Spectrum Disorder, which both simplified things and made them more complicated. But I digress...)

In my blogs I wrote from the point of view of a young autistic person finding their way in the world. 

But now I can't really call myself young, as I will be eligible for seniors only housing in less than 10 years. 

As I've become older, and can no longer call myself a young adult, some things have changed. 

For one thing, many of the people who help me are younger than me, sometimes by a couple of decades. I now have to work with doctors and social workers who think of the '80s as a distant and mysterious time when 12-year-olds were allowed to play outside without supervision, who don't know what a VCR is, and who only vaguely remember when the telephone was connected to a jack in the wall.

For another thing, I've given up on even trying or pretending to not be autistic. For a long time when I was younger, I was told that to my challenge in life was to appear normal. That if I just paid attention do what other people were doing, and copy them, I'd be fine. I still get told that by some people, but I no longer have the patience to listen to them. I let my autism hang out now. I flap when I want to. I jump when I want to. I don't force myself to make eye contact until my eyeballs are literally twitching. (I used to do that. The thing is though, making eye contact does not make you seem more professional or friendly when your eyes start twitching and you have to scrunch them shut in pain. People look at you weird. You can't see them looking at you weird because your eyes are scrunched shut in pain. But believe me, they look at you weird.)

Some things have not changed. I still look pretty similar to how I looked 20 years ago. In fact I am one of the only people my 91-year-old Nona recognizes, and I'm pretty sure that's why. Everyone else has grown and changed, but I've stayed pretty much the same. I'm starting to get a few wrinkles and gray hairs now, but people still mistake me for a teenager and ask me if I just got home from school. 

My interest really haven't changed either. I have a theory that most typically developing people don't necessarily lose interest in the things they enjoyed when they were younger, but give in to pressure to conform to what is age appropriate. For example, imagine two preschoolers who love the show "Bluey." One child is autistic and one child is typically developing. 

The typical developing child will probably notice that her older siblings don't watch shows like "Bluey." Older siblings may even make fun of the show and call it babyish. The child may notice that some of her more mature friends in classmates watch shows meant for older kids. If they wear a t-shirt with "Bluey" on it they might get made fun of it school. So gradually, they purposely begin to leave"Bluey" behind and move onto shows and characters that are meant for older kids. 

The autistic child may not notice any of that. They only notice that they love watching "Bluey." There are not a whole lot of episodes, so they get comfort from watching the same episodes over and over. As the autistic child gets older, her interest in "Bluey" stays the same.  The characters feel like old friends to her. The show feels like a part of her.

(By the way, I was nearly 40 when the show "Bluey" came out, but I still watch it everyday. It's a beautiful show. You should watch it. But I digress, again...)

I don't think my interests have changed a whole lot since childhood. I've always loved arts and crafts, reading, and being in nature. I've always loved animals. I've always loved everything rainbow. I've never had any interest in sports or science. I never got interested in makeup, hairstyles, or fashion. 

For as long as I can remember, I've always felt like I was somehow raw. I've always experienced the world more intensely than most people do. I've always felt as if I was slammed against a window, watching other people calmly go about their business. And that is still the same. 

I express myself best through writing. I sometimes joke that writing is my first language. And as my mental health has become even more fragile in recent years, I thought this could be a good outlet for sharing my thoughts and experiences.

So here's my new blog, as I start my adventure into middle age and then old age. Eventually I will be writing this blog from my Medicaid funded nursing home. For now, I'm writing it on the floor of the house where I am dog sitting for a dog named Blue and a cat named Slinky.

I've never been good at ending blog posts. I'm just going to back away slowly.