What age did you realize you weren't like everyone else?

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It’s really taken the past 6 years for me to accept how I am. There were at least a few school years that I had kind of put expectations on myself that looking back were unrealistic. A good example of all this was in 7th grade when I dated my first girlfriend. We were out on a date one night, and I wanted to have my first kiss ever. Long story short, I ended up trying to French her, and she broke up with me over text that night after we went our separate ways. She and her friends totally shamed me for it.

But looking back at it now, I realize that was just a 13 year old aspie having his first dating experience.

I continued to endure dating failures and friendships gone bad over the years, but now I’m out of HS, I have a job, I was just in a relationship for 5 months, and I at least have a few friends.

7th grade kids—autism or no autism—usually are not good at French kissing.

I felt something akin to derealisation when I was about 4 or 5. I didn't seem to belong in my body, or any body at all. I wanted to just be a free-floating mind without a form. I hated having a physical presence and wanted to be invisible. I knew that wasn't normal. Later, I began to feel quite different from my peers around the age of puberty. The other girls seemed to mature in ways I could not (socially), and they became too hard to interpret or emulate. I didn't realise I was "autistic" or that I had a reason for my differences, until the last couple of years.

I was 9 when it really sunk in for me. I was watching a home video from my birthday party that year. I watched my younger self having a meltdown because someone took my birthday candle out of the cake to lick it before I was done playing with the smoke after I had blown it out. I shouted and got really upset. The other kids laughed because they thought I was making some kind of weird joke. I tried to keep it together and play it off, but I couldn't. I had never watched it from the outside before. Looking at how I was, and how the other kids in my year were.... I realized I was not like them, in some less than flattering ways.

I wish I was able to see the good differences back then, but at first I could only see the bad differences.

Don't think i ever felt like everyone else. No one talked about these kinds of issues when i was a child.

It's not something I've thought about as to a specific age .

Indeed. This kind of thing is often a gradual process.

But if forced to pinpoint, I would personally perhaps point to whenever it was that I began to prefer privately reading sports statistics books during playtime at primary school, as opposed to socialising with others.

It became apparent to me at the age of 3 in preschool. I wasn't treated poorly but I did have little interest in what the other children seemed to enjoy. During Gym time for example I used to just go in a corner and push myself around on this little cart all day long. The teachers didn't bother me because I was well behaved. It wasn't until Grade 1 were I was forced to "follow the herd" did I really learn to hate school.

That was me in Junior High in a nutshell. I knew the location, age and seating capacity of every single NHL and MLB stadium! Why was that considered weird yet the kids who obsessed over the fad of the month wasn't?

My difficulty interacting with others became more apparent when I went to prep school at 8 . Then really went into hyperdrive on going to public school at 13. That's from a 'look back and analyse ' perspective. Whether I was aware at that actual time is another matter .

I was bullied even by other “special-needs” kids.

I was even more “different” than they were.

Around five when i started kindergarten. I hated it and i remember crying every day.

What strikes me is the good recall many of you have re those early years . My autobiographical memory is in the toilet especially for anything <8 years of age . <8 years of age it's like the meat in a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie.

At 28 I realised that I had a reputation for being a huge freak and that most of my acquaintances were blatantly being condescending. At that point I wondered if I had autism or some other condition but I swept that under the carpet at 45 someone suggested that I might be autistic.

I have a memory of playing with dust underneath the radiator at the back of the classroom aged 3, the teacher was talking to me and I woke up to find all the other kids at the front of the class gathered around to listen to a story.

By 4 kids would bring me sticks to play with, I became the stick boy.

By 5 kids were organising complex games and I would miss joining in.

At 11 I used to come around in an empty dining hall every day, everyone had finished and left without my noticing.

Yep, I've spent half my life in denial!

That's kinda creepy, coming from a 58-year old man.

Don’t try it, Sir.

You know what I’m talking about.

I was just trying to say that kids are inexperienced at that age—but try to portray themselves as experienced.

When I was growing up, junior high school aged kids were making clumsy attempts at seeming “grown up.” That included dating and making out. Nothing creepy about that. Part of growing up.

Just for the record: even as a 17-year-old, I was usually attracted to people OLDER than I was.

When I dissociated at school at the age of 7.