when did you "wake up"?

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Although I woke up to my life being different at an early age, there were so many differences that confusion reigned for decades. I misattributed my perception of difference to the aftereffects of my awful infancy and childhood.

I was abandoned, adopted, abused (all this was covered up and denied). My adoptive mother was (I now know) an extreme example of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and they construct "reality" to suit themselves, their needs, their lies. She was also much older than mothers of the children I went to school with. So all of those influences set me apart. I had no experience at home of being talked with in a conversation so I had poor social communication skills. I wasn't encouraged to have friends, wasn't allowed to join anything (like Girl Guides) and wasn't allowed to bring friends home (not that I had many - a few though, they were other sad kids like me). I look back on my childhood as a time of captivity in isolation. I grew up in the 1950s so there was absolutely no understanding of Aspergers and little tolerance of any personal difference - it was a very conformist time in which anyone the least bit different was just considered "fair game" for bullying or exclusion. I was very scholastic so being the "teacher's pet" didn't help either.

About 2 years ago, my adult daughter told me that she thought her husband had Aspergers. I wanted to understand what that meant, so I got Atwood out of the library, and discovered that I was an aspie too, at 65. I was reunited with my real families 30 years ago and there are four generations of aspies stemming from the maternal side of the family. On the paternal side two of my cousins have some strong aspie features. At the same time as I made this discovery, I discovered what malignant narcissism was, so finally I was able to see the whole huge picture with all these factors.. it did explain why decades of self-healing effort had resulted in so little gain.

My son in law is a professor of engineering - how aspie-typical is that!! ! Something Attwood wrote fascinated me: that aspie men tend to marry NTs, while aspie women tend to marry aspie men. If that is true, and it seems to be true from my observations, then there aren't many men left for aspie women to marry. I wonder if my NT daughter married her (very nice) aspie husband because his behaviours were already "familiar" to her - recognisable at a subconscious level from what she had grown up with.

I was young before kindergarten before I was different. I don't know how I knew I was different and why, it was just a feeling. Other kids could talk better and play better than me and do things better than me and I always thought I needed more practice. Also the fact I was in a classroom when I was six and seven with other kids who were also different but I still didn't know any different because I thought it was other classes that were strange and weird because of how the teachers did things and what kids did in their class and what their music and PE and library was like. I was eight when I realized I was in a different classroom and all the other classrooms were normal. Lot of kids seemed to have friends and be liked by lot of people and I wasn't, I was more targeted to be picked on, I could never go to other kids houses and it was rare if they let me inside and we always played at my house and then they would leave. I was never into chit chat and I always found it boring when kids would stand around and do nothing and just talk. I just thought it was something I could change and outgrow. I was 12 when I realized I was truly different and I didn't want to accept it then and it made me feel like I was broken and a freak. I have also felt younger than other kids too growing up. When I was little, I didn't feel that way until I was older because I didn't know any different in age groups because age was just a number back then. To me there was big kids and little kids so I didn't see any difference in who was older than me. I also noticed taller and shorter people. My mom always had to tell me about behaviors for different age groups if I copied younger children. I just saw it as different rules for each age group. I was 12 when I realized I didn't know how to be my age, maybe that was in fifth grade when I realized. I used to ask my mom how does a sixth grader act and what do twelve year olds do. I used to think "why me?" and now I am over that. It could have been worse.

It was incremental for me, in JK or perhaps preschool I noticed that the other kids had other styles of play and preferred to play in groups. They for some reason ignored me and refused to let me play with them or sometimes even appear to notice that I wanted to play with them. The bullying started in kindergarden with the intensity being turned up extremely high in Grade 1. These were the times where I could see that I was different socially. In Grade 1 I discovered just how bad delayed I was physically when we began to do more intense gym classes, I recall one of the first things we had to do was run around the gym and I was the slowest with the weakest stamina. In Grade 2-3 I realised how poor I was at some subjects, how different and more mature many of my personal interests were. I missed a lot of differences that would have been glaringly obvious to the other kids.

More recently I have begun to realise just how much different my life is from others, how different I appear to others, how odd or poor my social communication skills are and have been able to put all of the pieces smaller together to see why I was diagnosed with Asperger's.

Last edited by rapidroy on 13 Jan 2014, 10:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have occasionally gotten the sarcastic "you're welcome" my whole adult life.

As for the OP's question I have known that I was different for as long as I can remember.

I've mentioned this in a few other threads, but here it is again...

I was probably about eight years old, when I started realizing I was somehow "different" from others around me. I'm a chatterbox now, but I was actually a very quiet child, keeping to myself a lot. I'd see adults playing cards or dominoes, and they'd tell me to hang out with the other kids...but very few people my age have ever wanted much to do with me, even now.

I kept trying to explain how I felt to people in my family over the years, but they still don't understand. Some of them have grown so sick of my attempts, that they just shut me out entirely through indifference. A few months ago, I sat down with a psychologist for about 6 hours, and was told I had Asperger's Syndrome a week later. I'd read a little about it 2 or 3 years ago, but still wasn't sure. I bought a book on it, but still haven't read it because so much is about children, not adults.

For me this is three different questions with different answers.

Noticed the world around me?
When I was about two or three years old, though I have memories that go back to when I was nine months old. I think I was much more aware of the world around me than most kids when I was under 10 years old. Then a few began to catch up.

Realized I was different?
Kindergarten. But I did not think I was inferior, just different and, as everyone said, "more sensitive." My parents were writers and their friends were writers, artists and musicians, so I thought the difference had something to do with not being part of conventional society.

Realized I have some disability and this is part of a pattern called Aspergers/ASD?
Just a year or so ago, when I was 47 and had to learn about it because of my son's diagnosis.

At different times.
I have some very early memories. Maybe before I was a year old.
I'm told that I started talking very early, about 9 months old and I was able to speak full sentences by the time I was a year old.
When I was small, I didn't really know that I was different. I just could not understand why other people could be so cruel to me. I didn't know what I was doing wrong.
I remember learning to tell time and math was always very difficult for me. (It still is.) The teachers would get frustrated & yell at me for not paying attention and my sloppy handwriting. My Second grade teacher told my parents he couldn't understand how a child that reads way beyond her grade level can't figure out how to follow simple direction. He said I was just lazy.
I guess in about Seventh grade is when I realized that I was different from everyone else. No matter how hard I would try to fit in, It just never worked out for me.

I was diagnosed with MBD (minimal brain damage; diagnose not used anymore, is kind of a combination of asperger and ad(h)d) when I was 5. I know the diagnosis, but didn't quite understand what it meant. I don't remember asking before around 7-8 why I was in different therapies. I guess I realized about that age that I was different/disabled, because I was bullied.

As a child I spent 99% of my time alone. My school punished me for my "eccentricities" had they taken a less penal approach I would have been diagnosed with aspergers or ADHD I imagine. Ive always felt like I was just out of step with everyone else. When I was 14 I had a breakdown as the effects of this became more pronounced. I had a second awakening at around 17-18 which resulted in another breakdown.

I also recall a meltdown where I dragged all the books from my shelf in a rage. This was at 11-12 in response to emotions that I couldnt qualify or quantify.

Basically my realisations seemed to be fragmented across the years/. Anyone else experience theirs in a simialr fashion

When I was 5. One of my friends came over and we lined up cars and stuff together. I also overheard our mums talking about the usual stuff. 9/11, parenting, etc. Her mum had also mentioned that my friend was going to therapy because she was recently diagnosed with autism.

My mum kind of stopped and looked at us. I was listening from behind the corner and I returned to my friend and we continued to line stuff up and her mum said that lining stuff up was how she was diagnosed in the first place as well as not responding when people tried to talk to her.

I was stimming more than ever for the next few days.