Age of Realization

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Everybody new something was a little different about me. My mom thought I was having some sort of petit mauls (epilepsy) so she took me in for a brain scan. The doc was not a nice man and told her that the test was done wrong. It wasn't...the test just didn't show what he expected for a normal (NT) person and a person with epilepsy. Since I didn't have NT brain activity the test looked flat. Then I was diagnosed with ADD w/o Hyperactivity when I was 16. After talking to other kids that were diagnosed with the same thing, I began to realize that we did not share the same symptoms. At all. I continued to take my medication because it enabled me to drive and live. I'm 25 now and several months ago I was out with my then boyfriend and another couple that we knew pretty well. After trying and trying to make conversation and never really fitting in and feeling stupid the whole night, I knew something was wrong. I wasn't able to keep up. I was so embarrassed. So I started looking into what things may cause these problems and that's when I found out about AS. After reading up on it, reading this forum, etc., I knew I had it. Now I just need an offical diagnosis. But I still would like to be friends with other people like everyone else.

I realized I was different that other kids around the third grade but haven't given it much thought until a few weeks ago when I was finally diagnosed. I'm fifty-nine now.

I never fitted in at school but didn't really question it that deeply at the time...there are the popular people and those who get picked on. I was in the latter category. Simple as. Then I got interested in psychology and read a couple of self-help books as a teenager. I had always been labelled as shy but I knew that people were wrong about this. I mean I am a quiet person but that is because I don't do small-talk. What is the point in filling silence with meaningless rubbish just for the sake of talking? Anyway I digress...my mum had been telling me there was something wrong with me on and off throughout my childhood, not in a constructive way, but as if she was almost making fun of me or rubbing it in that I had a hard time socially. I didn't realise it at the time but I can see now that I was suffering from depression for a good part of my teenage years. I was referred for counselling a couple of times but didn't understand why. Surely the bullies were the ones with the problem? I managed to duck out of couselling the second time (the first time was when I was still at school; I used to sit there in silence while the counsellor dragged the odd word out of me. I resented her for pulling me out of lessons, which I enjoyed, especially as now my classmates had a new reason to pick on me). I muddled through 'A' Levels and didn't do as well as people expected, which was odd as I had been top of the class in primary school. I got through college without making any friends. I was still depressed at this point. I spent a year on unemployment benefit (didn't have any idea what I was supposed to do for a career and couldn't understand what i was doing wrong in job interviews). Went back to college where I met the most inspirational teacher ever to have made an impact on me. Things slowly began to improve although I still hadn't twigged that I was suffering from depression. Something inside me changed at this point, it was almost like waking from a long sleep. I realised that things could be different. It just so happened that it was as a result of attending this college that I met many of the friends I associate with today (in fact I dread to think what my life would be like right now had I not gone back to college). I spent six years clawing my way back out of the dark hole. To cut a long story short, one of my new friends committed suicide back in August and it turns out he was autistic apparently. It had never occurred to me when he was alive that he might have the condition but his death triggered something inside me and I began to research the subject on the internet. It slowly dawned on me about eight months ago that I have AS. It was just like putting together the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, or someone turning a light on.
And it turns out my mum was right all along. I'm not normal. But I'm slowly coming to terms with it. And trying to work out whether to tell my family the real reason behind my weirdness. And that it affects them too. And whether to tell my friends, if so which ones... etc etc

My knowing I was different... Probably started sometime in the third grade. I noticed I preferred to read, that the other girls always wanted to play princesses and teachers and nurses, that everyone else liked sports...

By the sixth grade I knew what autism was and identified with it, though I did not yet know what Asperger Syndrome was and consequently just thought I might just be one of the normal people who were a little bit like autistic people. It was around this time that I stopped trying to be "normal" and to "fit in", and that my mother took me out of school because she was afraid I would be diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, then a new and apparently rather popular diagnosis.

I began strongly suspecting Asperger Syndrome sometime last year, when I became interested (as in "Aspie obsession") in psychology, and saw how closely the DSM-IV description of AS fit me. I'm not a textbook case, though; I have several other problems and traits complicating the picture (Immigrant, childhood abuse, depression, and some years of home-schooling and isolation from other children).

I was diagnosed with AS only a few weeks ago; it was confirmation of what I've known for a long time--I'm different.

Strangely thats exactly how I feel, after reading about Asperger's I feel good to be me, sure im different but its a good kind of different. I've suspected something was different since I started at school, over the years I only ever became increasingly sure and by the time I was 23 I'd "given up on humanity"

I kinda always knew I was a bit different. Maybe I didn't comprehend it completely at first, but subconsciously the feeling was there. I was always in special classes 'n s**t at school, so i knew i had a learning disability, and i was diagnosed with ADD a couple years prior. But then, one fatefull night... actually it was just a day like any other, my mom was like *what you have is called aspergers*. It took me until this last January ('06) to totally come to terms with it and not just bury it under my skin any longer. I don't think I really understood it until now, I shrugged it off as a learning disability. I still am in the closet about it to the rest of the world. I sometimes wonder if coming out would be the best thing to do.

Primary school (that is what it's called in Australia) was like that for me too. I couldn't understand why everyone liked to pretend to be someone else.
Later on in high school, there were popular people and unpopular people. I was the one that the unpopular people picked on...

I don't think I knew I was different till I was 18 or 19 years old,I was completely oblivious to other people,possibly due to having no interest in them so there were no comparisons.
I was kicked out of the high school system early so wasn't around those prats who think it's their
duty to list and complain about their peers' differences for long,to the ones who did bully me,I ranted about them in my FR notes a few years ago and other people who were in my classes put support for me in their FR notes,although they were people I never had any problems with I don't think.

As far as I can remember I have always felt different.
I hated being hugged or kissed. Whenever my parents or whoever hugged or kissed me, I froze up, and according to my mum she tried to give me a kiss on the cheek one day, when I was 3, and I said: "Don't do that, it's going to make my face look ugly".
Feeling different got worse and worse over the years, especially when I hit puberty. I wasn't like the other girls in my school, at the age of 12, I was the only girl in the computer club at school. Most people I hung out with were male. I felt so different at one point I even thought I was gay, but I have never ever fancied a girl in my life. ROFL. (It's not a joke, but it still makes me snigger every time I look back at that moment.)

I was always different. I've always been aware of that at some level.

I've known I was different since first grade. They powers that be made me take a whole battery of tests with the school psychologist and then skipped me to third grade the following year because of my "giftedness." The doctor put me on some kind of nasty tasting liquid tranquilizer-type crap for my "nervousness." Eventually the nasty liquid was replaced with a little red pill.. for which my mother used to punish me when I forgot to take it.

My very domineering maternal grandmother, who I think would have happily assumed the role of God if God would have allowed it, decided that, as the first grandchild, I was the "perfect grandchild" and was to be encouraged in every way possible to succeed. Every quirk and oddity was chalked up to "giftedness" and vigorously defended. I had facial and vocal tics, obsessive interests, lousy eye contact, straight A's in school, and my only "friends" were an occasional other weird kid in class.

I really, really, really lucked out, considering what other aspies have had to endure all their lives. God bless my grandmother-advocate. My life was pretty darn GOOD regardless of my social limitations and some teasing in school (I learned early on how to hide the aspects of my real self that kids teased me about).

Yet I never heard of AS until I was 40 years old. It's like I had been doing a jigsaw puzzle for 40 years, in the dark, and somehow getting it right. Now the light is ON and I can see the beautiful results.

I knew I was different very early on because of my obsession with computers. I was extremely heavily into computer programming, even before I started school.

My and my (NT) brother also had a game we called "Brainless and Doc", where we would exaggerate our differences.


Though it wasn't until 2nd grade when I realized how different I really was, with the whole "making and keeping friends" thing. Things grew worse from there.

I knew it all my life. It wasn't until my formal Dx at 42 that we could finally peg a name to it. Now we know

About the age of 8 when I was diagosed with autism. I realized I could not possibly connect with my peers at a social level. I could get on with just another single playmate at a time occasionally but as soon as it involved a group of kids, I was totally ostracised. That is when I realized I was different.