Imagining why you felt different as a kid

Post Reply New Topic

I thought I was an alien or some other sort of animal. It was nicer to imagine being from some faraway place.

I didn't know how to. I only said "what is wrong with me?" and "I wish I could trade my brain for a different brain" and "Why do I have to be so different?" and "Why can't I be normal?" and "I wish I was normal."

In one of my assessments, I had to do a drawing and I drew myself as being isolated while other kids were playing and I described myself as different and the psychologist thought it was low self esteem I was dealing with.

I moved from UK to USA when I was 5, so I thought a lot of the times I didn't get it were because I was English. Then after 3 and a half years we moved back to England and I thought the differences and lack of understanding were because I was too American. It never occured to me that my two sisters didn't have the same problem.

I had a few theories. Possibly, I grew up poor, missing out on a lot of "proper" socialization.

The other theory I turned to when I was much younger and more in need of solace. I believed the world so big that, logically, I only need find my double and then we could finally be friends. Ha! A sweet thought perhaps feasible in the multiverse! A comfort to my past self, it turned out half right. I did find this forum and kindred spirits in all of you. I no longer feel so lonely.

I never imagined. It just felt like an intrinsic disadvantage.
I knew words. I knew what people were saying, but there were times it sounded muffled or foreign sounding. I would try to answer, but I did not know how. Speech therapy did not help. A friend whose sister had Aspergers taught me how to speak.

I was pretty oblivious when I was young, and when I got a bit older there were some very real isolating and ostracizing aspects of my life. For a long time, those made a lot of sense, but I knew they weren't the truth.

At age 8 when I first felt something like that... Yet, I just denied it and became angrier with some of my peers treated me.

I didn't missed out things, I didn't grew up sheltered, I wasn't exposed to things that children aren't supposed to be exposed at, and I don't seem to be disabled in any way or form.
I wasn't weaker or clumsier, I don't start trouble and sometimes I could do better -- I wasn't any more flawed than any child. I didn't felt incomplete -- I have both parents, a sibling, not any richer or poorer. I wasn't deprived or spoiled in a sense thatI don't have any more or less than others.
I things I like aren't considered odd -- my special interest is deemed as very acceptable female interest and a trend even.
I could read, write, speak, walk, hear, see, count, draw, name, etc.. My looks and physiques aren't the issue either. And I didn't do or have any worse than that.

I don't see anything odd with whatever I had then -- except those kids called me crazy. The best explanation I have against them is that they were a bunch of dumb cowards -- ah, if only I knew how true that statement was if I could replace certain synonyms...

That's how I turned to denial first -- why I don't have any explanation to make anything up why I'm different. Instead, I make up explanations against others.
At the same time, I didn't realized I sense or see things that others don't, and don't sense or see things other things that others do.

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

I used to believe I was different because I thought I was much kinder than everyone else, kids or adults. At one point, I even made myself a medal out of cardboard and aluminum foil, saying "Kindest Child Ever Lived". (Fortunately, I had the foresight not to wear it outside of home.) I got the idea from the fact that I got bullied even in preschool and always got yelled at by my family, all while being "too nice" to do such things myself. Plus, I was always kind to animals, which wasn't the case for many of my peers, especially boys. So, my explanation for it all was that other kids weren't used to being around someone as kind and gentle as me, and didn't know how to act around such a person.

Of course, looking back on my life and the mean things I said to people, out of mind-blindness or simple negligence, rather than intention to be cruel, I realize that "kindness" wasn't really it. Plus, on some level, I copied the behavior of people who were mean to me and were popular because of that. Which doesn't make my actions right, but still.

Speaking of being nice to animals, there's a great fairy tale "The Hut in the Forest" by Brothers Grimm. My parents read it to me when I was little. It's about the youngest daughter who married a prince, as a reward for being nice to animals that lived in a house in the middle of a forest. And her two older sisters were sentenced to work for a charcoal burner, for neglecting these animals. Needless to say, I liked the fairy tale, even though it's pretty dark.

I always thought it was little things that others probably didn't notice or even care about. I didn't know I was actually autistic until I was about 13 and I didn't know what it even was prior to that. I used to think it was just that I was overweight and shorter than a lot of the other girls my age. I also thought it was because I was the first kid to have glasses in my grade (I already had them when I entered kindergarten). I thought it also was because my parents were older than a lot of the other kids' parents and I didn't grow up in an "ideal" situation with my family. My sensory issues also prevented me from wearing "trendy" clothes so I thought that was another thing, even though I never really wanted to dress like that anyways. My interests were also different. I actually sometimes believed I was born in the wrong decade because I was obsessed with the 1980's and early 1990's

I would write stories about myself and my surroundings. I thought that I would go on to be a famous author with those stories

I just thought my difficulties were due to how I talked and not hearing when I was a baby so it made me that way and I thought my issues were due to other kids treating me different because of how I talked. I got to 4th grade when I realized there were other kids in my school who also talked funny and were in speech therapy for it and they were still "normal" and I realized I had more going on than just how I talked. I also thought I was full of bad luck but I realized it was more than just having bad luck. I decided I could try and be normal by studying human behavior and mimicking it and watching what other kids do and studying what is bad behavior and not do that behavior and try and be like the other kids. I would get in trouble for it too and it was always trial and error. I didn't have a label then so I didn't have any excuses for my lack of social skills or social awkwardness and I just thought I could make myself normal by acting that way and I always felt like the last to figure it out. Which is why I am glad I didn't know about Asperger's then or about having a disability because I know I would have used it as a crutch like I started to do in high school and not wanting to keep trying anymore. That is very frowned upon in my family, you are not allowed to get worse or go back to being your old self and you are to be your best self and be what you have learned. I also thought everyone did it this way but they were just quicker at it than me until I started joining autism groups online. Now I have learned they do learn it this way too or how else do kids learn social skills and learn to read social cues, etc. and there is the peer pressure so very confusing.

So I am with parents who don't tell their kids about their disability even if they know they are already different. I know mine hid it from me until 6th grade but I didn't know about having a disability until high school. I still didn't use it as a crutch in junior high because I wanted to be normal and once I started to accept I am different than others, is when I stopped trying to make all my effort in trying to be like everyone else and trying to force myself to socialize with my peers. I just didn't care how others felt about me or thought and I didn't get bullied anymore so I wasn't forced to try and be normal.

I didn't think of myself as anything else but a human when I were a kid but in my imagination I had more in common with ghosts and other supernatural beings than humans. I was never afraid of the "scary" beings such as The Groke from Moomins or the "Stakeman that kidnaps misbehaving kids" grandma tried to scare me with. I preferred staying by the apparently "haunted" school basement door and "risk" meeting a ghost than dealing with my classmates because humans were more scary than ghosts for me. It gotten even worse at age 9 when Beetle Juice cartoon become my special interest - I ended up searching for "haunted" places and was often chanting the Beetle Juice incantation, hoping he would appear and deal with my bullies.

My imagination went really wild during my teenage years, 12-16. That was when I finally realized how much different I am from other people (my peers started to change mentally and I was still a kid on the inside, despite my body changing in time - at age 15 I lost my 12 and 13 yo childhood friends because they become teenagers and I still wanted to play childish plays) and needed some explanation.
I went from a witch (Harry Potter influence), demon, vampire, angel, indigo child, hybrid to an alien experiment and after that I just grew up and "stopped believe in fairly tales", accepting I am just a messed up human. I learned I am an Aspie 7 years after that.

Well, I was only diagnosed at 30 so had no explanation for being so different growing up. At my most distressed I thought I must be some kind of not-quite-human, a monster is the best way I could think of it to myself. I remember daydreaming and fantasising a lot about scenarios where I would go 'surviving'; living off out in the wilderness away from society living off what I could forage. I had suicidal thoughts and had this sense of inevitability about ending up either dead by my own hand or in some kind of institution by my twenties. The sad thing is I was actually longing for the relief that being institutionalised would bring. As I went to uni I made passing as reasonably normal my sole focus and deliberately put thoughts of my otherness and my difficult childhood out of my mind. That worked for a while but I'd still have moments of self-analysis in my twenties wondering very very seriously if I was a psychopath and if I should address it or hide it.
By the time I realised it was ASD and got diagnosed at 30 I had more or less blocked out all thoughts of my childhood struggles and had explained away my teenage half-arsed suicide attempts and self-harm as overblown teenage angst...so doubling back and having to realise that I was not simply imaging all of the difficulties was a headf**k of the highest order. Things are going better now but life is still a struggle. At least I don't need to imagine what might be wrong any more.