sleep wake hope and then: Why I hope I'm autistic

For the longest time, I was afraid to wear any shirts with any association whatsoever in public. Especially sports shirts. Somehow I had heard of sports fans getting in brawls and I was convinced if I wore a shirt with any affiliation on it, I would get beaten up.

People tried to explain to me that it was very unlikely that people would get into a fight with a 120 pound girl wearing a shirt for a team from that city, but I still was afraid. What if they interrogated me and realized I wasn't a real fan, but was only wearing that shirt because someone gave it to me as a present and it was clean? And then beat me up for being an imposter?

I've been told this is unrealistic and they are probably right.

I am not sure where this fear came from.

Still, when I go to the outside, and I'm in a sea of faces, they all are thinking different things.

I'm always afraid that they will realize that I don't belong (in normal, everyday life, not just in wearing t-shirts)*. That I am just pretending to be real. That one day I will slip and they** will catch me.

I want to fit in somewhere.

And then I found the word autism, and the Internet Autistic community, and I found a possible explanation for why I never quite seemed to fit (except with a few very small, specific group)...

and I'm afraid I will be just not quite autistic enough to count. Almost, but not quite.

Sitting somewhere in between.
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* just to clarify, this is a transition. Sometimes people don't understand my transitions when I go from one paragraph to another, even when I think they are pretty logical. I am going from a specific, mildly amusing story to the more general trend.

**who is this they, you may ask? I will respond, "I don't know. Probably the same they that would beat me up for wearing t-shirts.
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