Compared to some other users on this thread, I took quite a long time until I understood myself as being 'different'. I was aware of peer rejection ever since I started going to playgroup at the age of three, and I started to experience active hostility from peers when I was about seven. However, rather than seeing this as an indication that I was different, I came to the conclusion that this happened because I was immoral or unlikeable.
I'm certain that I'd started to see myself as different by the time I reached the age of eight. I remember watching a cartoon about a boy who discovered that he was actually a robot, and thinking 'Well, that must be what's wrong with me - it'd explain why I'm not like other people'. Perhaps I'd already developed a sense of feeling different by that point, but that's my earliest memory of having those feelings.
I remember getting upset about my social rejection from when I started playgroup at the age of three, but, as I said earlier, I attributed it to different causes; until I started to view myself as being different, I was very preoccupied with becoming 'more moral' or 'more likeable'. After I came to the realisation that I was different from other children, I became more self-accepting for a year or so; I felt that, rather than being morally inferior, I was 'just me' - no better, no worse. However, as I approached my teenage years and I started to get bullied more frequently, I grew to loathe my differences and the effect they had on my life.
I was diagnosed at age seven, but I didn't find out until I was ten. Finding out about Asperger's didn't have much of an impact on my feelings about my differences; it just gave them a name, really.
14 Jun 2012, 7:32 pm
