• Perpetually feeling like a child - never arriving as a ‘grown up’
• A propensity towards the innocent, stuffies, children’s books & movies
• Extreme dislike of innuendos, dirty jokes, crude behavior
• Gullibility, target of narcissism & abuse
• Not understanding many jokes and insinuations

These characteristics have made moving though life in relation to other people very difficult.  As a child, being naive and literal got me into all sorts of trouble with my peers.  For years.

As I got older, that part of me did not change.  I am still the same at the core as I was forty years ago in this regard.  It still gets me in trouble.  I always want to see the best in people and get taken advantage of, lied to, stolen from.  

Now, as an adult, but still a child inside in many ways, I still have trouble with peer relations, and my circle of friends is very small.  

I so often don't get jokes.  People have to explain them to me.  When things get raunchy, I am out of there.  Can't. Stand. It.  Keep it to yourself, people. G-rated convos only, please.

It's a conundrum.  I am an adult.  I have life experience.  I am married and a mother.  I enjoy adult movies, but like at a Pure Flix level.  I enjoy deep conversations.  I have a mature brain in many ways - but still somehow a child.

Years of living in squalor did not change who I am at the core in this regard.  I anesthetized with drugs and alcohol until I escaped and somehow retained my core self.

I could never understand this part of myself until I learned that I am Autistic.  I used to feel like an alien. 

The longer I live after my diagnosis, the more I see other Autistics that have these same traits. They are like my soul brothers and soul sisters and have helped me understand that I am not an alien - I am Autistic.  I am validated and it somehow is now okay.  It's not something to change or fix.  I am Autistic.