Aspie Girls Awkwardness

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i'm much better now. as a kid a went through a near non verbal phase,between the ages of 8 and 9 where i COULD talk, but for some reason almost never did. at home i said the minimum, at school avoided being visible altogether if i managed, that was a pretty obvious phase. talking frustrated me very very much, the same way nts would be if they were told that if what they said didn't rhyme, then it didn't matter.
teenage years where my "gait learning"years, where i stopped bopping around with my hips and shoulders to the front. i became stiff as a stick, somehow i thought nts walked with every muscle in their body tightened. then i learnt to "relax"while tensing my muscles. hard work.
i look fairly normal now, except when i remember i need to pay attention to how i walk, then i get awkward again. can never figure what to do with my arms so i carry stuff ( purse, but i hate them, keys, cigarettes, or a baby( mine generally )
it's when i have to talk that i'm obvious again. not only the conversation but the language is weird. as a kid i learnt to say "yeah"instead of yes, and generally to stop using words longer than 2 syllables, but after 20 it becomes outdated, so i am still to shake the 25 years old habit of answering to people in moronic language. and control my "i guess..." "i suppose""i'm not sure, maybe you're right"tics. i know it's never appropriate to sound like you know what you're talking about but i'm ending up never being taken seriously . (along with the teenagey jokes i still use)
but yeah, physically i can pass i guess. as long as i keep my mouth shut.

I have a very high IQ (i test at average scientist level) and are able to "fake it" and blend in (most of the time except if i got emotional over something.. couldnt blend if i was having an Aspie meltdown). This blending in thou is extremely tiring for me and makes me feel completely fake.

People who do notice im different (when im choosing to be myself, i only do that thou about those who know me very well), will just think im a little eccentric or weird.

In group situations, I often have to cut social outtings short and people dont seem to notice. Im not at all a quiet person when about friends as I love to talk, but in a group situation I hardly speak at all as I cant enter conversations etc... so I just then come across as quiet to people. They have no idea I dont talk much as the NT convos rarely interest me and the ones which do, I just cant tell when to enter the convo so I miss out doing.

At high school, kids avoided me and thought i was a little weird (thou i dont know why and they didnt know. They must of thou sensed something different about me.. i got teased over stupid things eg my last name so i guess they couldnt pick anything obvious to them which stood out to pick at me on).

Its hard cause I blend in so well.. it makes others get huge expectations of me.. so i then end up breaking down in stress when im around those who are close to me and really know what goes on with me. I manage to hide a lot..

I apparently can fake it well. At a suprise birthday for my Mum, a lot of my relatives said 'how much better I was'. Urg, Mum saw through it but appreciated the effort I made (I think).

From what I hear from NT's, and the fact that I only got diagnosed last year, I seem to pull off being normal pretty well. I think it stems from when I was a kid. I've got one brother who's 2 years older than me and although he's never been diagnosed I'm almost certain he has AS too.

When we were kids his traits were extremely pronounced, so much so that my parents took him to see a behavioural psychologist for a couple of years to see if he could help him. This being the UK in the 80's, no one had heard of AS including the psychologist, so he had no idea what was wrong with him and was pretty ineffectual. My parent's got pretty stressed out about it all as they don't like things that are unusual so I decided that I'd do everything I could to minimize their stress and just make myself as normal as possible, so I systematically evaluated my behaviour around people and erased or squashed as best as possible anything which I noticed drew strange looks or negative responses from people. I also, and still do, study other people intensely when I'm in situations that I haven't dealt with before to see how they react and learn the protocol from them.

I'm in no way saying this is the best way to go about things but it's what I chose to do. I've never told my brother about this and don't plan to, as there would be no benefit to either of us in doing so.

I didn't camouflage growing up. Like ChrisVulcan, I was always told that the reason I didn't fit in was that I was very intelligent. The fact that I heard this so often suggests to me, in hindsight, that everyone could tell I didn't fit in. At the time, I was keenly aware that I was different but oblivious to the fact that I stood out, so I did not think to camouflage.

These days, I suppose I do. I censor myself, to an extent, and I try to pay attention to the way I dress (though I still sometimes get told my style is eccentric). I smile more and try to remember to mimic people's emotional states, look them in the eye, talk about inanities with exaggerated emotion, etc. When I first started doing this, I received a lot of comments about how I had "come out of my shell," which I found terribly insulting and a bit saddening, since I thought the quiet me was the more genuine.

Still, I believe I come across, to those who don't know me, as very shy and timid. Then, when they get to know me a little, I have been told that I can come across as arrogant and hard instead. Then, if they really get to know me, they realize that I am not particularly either of these things.

Yet another overly-verbose post. My apologies.

Male or female, I think it all depends on the person. I tend to get quieter the more I'm stressed, this passes for more normal than acting out. It probably depends more on who your friends are and what you feel you have to do to fit in as well.

A lot of people get all kinds of wrong impressions of me. They think I dislike them when I don't even know them, they think I'm arrogant while I'm feeling intimidated, they think I'm serious and narrow-minded when I'm neither. But no one has EVER suggested to me that I have Asperger's, and I don't generally let it be known. So I guess I'm "passing" as an a-hole.
Which is a shame, because the friends I do have tell me I'm quite funny and easy-going. Although I have one friend who actually told me the only reason she was able to get to know me is that she made it a goal and basically pursued me. Like a platonic courtship or something.

Sorry to post twice in a row.
I just wanted to add that, as a child, I also got the whole "you're different because you're so smart" thing. I don't think the people who said it were lying, I think it was the only explanation they had at the time. When I think of it now, it reminds me of Little House on the Prairie (I used to watch it a lot) when Nellie's mom tells her the other kids don't like her because she's pretty.

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I don't try to mask my awkwardness because I hate talking to other people. I sometimes act as awkward and distant as possible just to avoid conversations. I'm very asocial when it comes to most people.

yeah, i'm a little bit like Xfile geek , i pass my aspiness as humour. i have a reputation for having a weird "british sense of humour"( i'm french) because i say jokes with a straight face. usually though, they're not jokes until i have finished talking, people look at me, so i make a knowing smile, and they go "bahahhahah you're so funny how do you not even laugh??"hehe well, aspie blunder turned english humour. who would have known....not 7 years old me, anyway!

I can't fake normalcy. Though I've gotten better at suppressing stimming. Handflaps still sneak out when I'm excited though. A person who knew anything about it would know right away I suppose. Generally I just say very little - that prevents social fumbles on my part.

people think i am outgoing and weird and strange, but they often don't suspect there is anything truly different. it helps that i stopped toe-walking.

I can sometimes pretend to look and act normal, but it is generally difficult. Case in point: a sixth grader said I was psychotic and that I should be on a science channel (and he didn't say it as a compliment).