But I don't feel different

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Jannissy got it right, IMHO, in saying that we're different, and yet the same. We share so many human characteristics with NTs, because we _are_ human, but we're also different in many ways, including different among ourselves: none of us is quite the same as the others, but it does seem quite clear that we belong together here on WP.

I think I've always known that I was different. For a long time, I thought maybe it was because I was bright, or overweight, or there was _something_, something people could "smell" about me, that made me unable to make friends, or keep them long if I did. When I was being assigned roommates in college, it was like having built-in friends for a while, and I got along okay with them, but we never kept in touch very well. At least I always did have my cousins, who were used to me from the times we were all in diapers. But I was still pretty sure that there was something wrong with me so far as the rest of the human race was concerned.

I really did daydream all the science fiction stories when I was a teen -- there were so many about aliens trying to blend in, or lost, or mutants, like Zenna Henderson's stories of The People, who usually got found by their People at the end of the story (human type aliens who were scattered across the earth, mostly the American West, by a shipwreck). I wonder whether the SF writers might have all been Aspies!

It was such a _relief_ to find out that it was just Asperger's, a slightly different way of wiring in my head.

I first knew I was different when I was 5 years old. The moment that made me realise this:

I watched my class all gang up on this little boy and make fun of him and I felt no urge to join in. They started chanting, and it was almost like they were a flock of geese, they seemed to all feed off each other.

I realised then that most people seemed to act in a kind of unison, and it was something I didnt feel the urge to join, if that makes any sense. It was like they could all see something that I couldnt and were responding to it.

I always felt that I was different because I was smart, nerdy and academic. I always thought as a kid that social activities and chatting were for those who sucked at all the academic stuff. I was able to get away with having a friend from another school. Then when I moved schools I hung out with those I perceived to be fellow nerds. It wasn't until secondary school that the word autism kept springing into my brain. I always thought it was too mild to ever get diagnosed. As a nerd, I spent High School befriending fellow outcasts and loners. Then University started, it was awesome and then eventually s**t hit the fan and my counsellor suggested it was Aspergers. I knew that I must have that or something similar because it confirmed everything that I had suspected about myself. At that stage I had friends with Aspergers so the description felt quite comfortable. Being different and having the diagnosis to support it is great. There has never been anything wrong with me. The only problem is parts of society not understanding that such neurodiversity can exist and that its actually beneficial.

I feel normal like myself and always have, but I knew that I was different, because everyone around me constantly told me about how weird I was. This has been going on all my life, and it even comes from people who don't know me that well. I would have thought that people who don't know others that well don't go around telling them how weird they are, but I guess I give off the "Tell me how weird I am" vibes to everyone. I don't know if "You are really really really weird" is supposed to krapkoat some other hidden message. I can't figure it out, so I have decided that it is better to ostrich my head into the sand on this issue. I have even had people congratulate me on my "genuine weirdness" in contrast to others whom they suspected of "acting weird". I was the weird one in every group I have been in, and I have never known what it is like to be one person blending into a group, either from the perspective of others or myself. They were constantly telling me how weird I was, and I was constantly not knowing how to reply. I guess I know how to reply now.

As a kid i knew there was something in me that made other people seem foreign and made them hate me. At first i thought that my mother was right and that i was (bless my mother) so smart that i couldn't understand their stupidity and they were jealous of me. As teenage years approached, i then moved on to thinking that i was monster-ugly as F. That HAD to be the reason they didn't want to be friends with me, as they were so obsessed with appearance. Then i got obsessed with standing straight, walking without bouncing, laughing at jokes even if they were dumb, etc, i thought my body language needed fixing (it did, to them, i heard enough of "why do your legs move in front of you, they should be under you bahahahaha" to know )
took me 30 years to understand how all this was linked. I wish i had been diagnosed earlier.......

I always felt different to others.

But at the same time, when I told people this, they said that everybody felt that way ... everybody is different, everyone is unique ... blah blah blah.

So ... I grew up believing I was the same everybody else ... that everyone felt the same way as I did, that everyone thought the same way as I did, and that everyone struggled with the same things I did.

Turns out though, I have an autism spectrum disorder and my brain does work differently to the majority, I do think and feel differently, and I struggle with things that most people don't. But because I've been conditioned to think that I am the same as everybody else this feels really odd ... it's a relief to know (and I sought the diagnosis) ... but it still feels really odd.

I always felt that everyone was "alien". I didn't feel different.

That's the other way round, I think. I was very content with "me" but I felt that my environment was odd and "the others" were something else entirely. Inexplicable, chaotic, foreign, annoying and fun.

I didn't think "other children are different" or "I am different" because I didn't perceive other people as "other people" until much later. From my perspective, the other children and the adults didn't seem to have much in common. I wondered if they have a mind at all because their behaviour seemed mostly mindless and random to me.

Table, child, book, adult, another child, sand box... all not Sora. Sora's body? Apparently supposed to be Sora's.

I didn't think "Tom, Astrid, Vio and I are all children" or "the kindergarten nurse, Vio's mother, random strangers on the streets are all adults".

I figured these people all belong to single categories because one child wasn't the same as another child, one adult wasn't the same as the other adults. Same as that books in kindergarten weren't "books" to me because "books" are the books I have at home in my room. I can't remember to have ever read a book in kindergarten?

Sure: language puts them into categories called "children", "adults" and "books" but in my early childhood, (abstract) language had little meaning to me.


Later then I noticed that 1) my classmates and I were children and that 2) they're alike but 3) different from me which meant that 4) I must be the odd one out. I could name a great deal of differences between us but on my own, I'd not have been able to explain that they're not autistic, they do eye-contact, they're able to speak easily, they can sit down and concentrate for a long time... so on.

I remember that one of the first things that stunned me upon reading up on autism was that eye-contact is practised by most people and has a useful purpose.

I clearly remember moments like this. Reading in bed, seeing my hand turn the page and thinking: "wow. I have a physical body" or seeing my feet and thinking they were very far away lol.....just passing feelings like that.

I had this moment of realisation that the ball of jelly that was my eye was doing all these amazing things so that I could see. I tried to explain to my Mum and she thought I was crackers!

Yes, I think it is as above we are all human and there is a lot of variations between humans. It is not a case of NT and AS so much as there are lots of overlapping subgroups of humans with different personalities and degrees of health/functioning. We do share things with NTs. There are a lot of things I can relate to but the key is that I have social difficulties and they don't, or if they do it is for different reasons such as they don't care or learnt to act a certain way.

The only time I feel different is when I'm around people I don't know. Otherwise, I feel like I'm normal.