Monday, Mar. 13, 2017 - 10:12 a.m.

Managed to get to the talk yesterday. Yay. The introduction-giving woman surprised me when I was sitting there waiting for it to begin by introducing herself to me (she was generally doing this to audience members), commented on my tshirt and asked me what brought me to the talk today or something like that. I was so unprepared for conversation and the answering of questions that I gaped at her and made fish faces for a few long seconds. Then managed to haul myself up out of the nonverbal pit and strung together a coherent sentence. If I had been wearing my "actually autistic" shirt, I would have just pointed at it by way of explanation.

Ok, so for the better part of the past year since my self-realization about this, I have been doubting myself in equal measures. I used to do this in school, too, if some kid had been caught plagiarizing and the teacher delivered a stern talk to the class, I would actually worry that I had done it without realizing it. Just, a good bit of anxiety over being called a faker or having to defend myself against such accusations. And so too with the autism. I haven't been able to shake it despite my best logic being applied. But that incident at the book fest, dudes, that was SO AUTISTIC. So clear in retrospect, but at the time I was there in a novel situation like, "what do you mean it's full when it doesn't start for another 4 minutes?" and could not get beyond that. And then the meltdown. ("Why is a 43 year old woman crying because she couldn't get into a talk?") And since then my insecurity about all this has melted away. No doubts left.

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