Have you always felt different?

[alien girl]

I had a feeling I was different as early as kindergarten, because kids called me "weird" and excluded me from things. But it didn't really hit home till junior high, when I was still into things like playing pretend, cartoons and sleepovers while my peers were interested in getting boyfriends and being popular. I felt like all the other kids were growing up and I was still mentally stuck in elementary school. That's why I never really "felt right" even though I was being treated for mental problems like OCD and anxiety disorder. When I finally got diagnosed with AS, it finally all made sense to me.

other kids in kindergarten excluded me, too, but didnt call me weird, not to my face, anyway. and i also have ocd and general anxiety.

 

[Alpaca]

I've always known I was different. 2nd graders usually don't recite ancient Egyptian religious practices verbatim.

Only while within the deepest depths of my darkest depression, have I ever called myself weird.
I don't think I am. Different? In the sense that everything is different and unique. I will never compare myself to society and call myself different or weird. Society is controlled chaos. So am I.

 

[jozack]

I have always felt different?? MY eldest son has asd he's 21, now my young son who is 3 has speech delay, and is display some of the same traits as him, could this be genetic, I have never had a diagnois. don't know what to do, feel quite alone

 

[The Penguin]

Yes I don't connect with people well as I not into the trends. As well most not interested what I am into. I tend to do things alone

 

[umbrellabeach]

Yes, even as a young child I always felt different from other kids. I didn't know why, I just felt it.

 

[tree]

No.
It is the other people who are different
from me.

 

[FreeDiver]

I always felt different. But I always felt like I just needed to work harder at fitting in. BOY! was that ever a waste of time. Although I don't regret trying. It would've been nice if something told me that the horse is dead, so I'd stop beating it.

 

[tfwo]

When I was six years old and in second grade. We had gone to the library for art class, were I was finding myself getting increasingly agitated. I could not understand why the teacher would have troubled us with such a meaningless task. I look up from my project, wondering how the other children are getting along with there work. While I expected to see scowling faces, I was perplexed to find that everyone seemed to be smiling and pleasant. Although I may have suspected it before, I now knew with certainty, that I was somehow different than everyone else.

 

[Progster]

No.
It is the other people who are different
from me.

Yes, this.

Though when I was in primary school, the other kids teased me, and I could undertand why they had singled me out, because as far as I was concerned, I wasn't any different to them, at least not physically.

 

[StephF]

Yes, always

 

[qwerty]

yep, i have always felt different for my whole life too. I know everybody's different in their own way, but for me what makes me feel so different is the whole exhaustion thing that comes with social interaction and the need to be on my own to recharge before repeating the whole process over n over again.

i became quite good at presenting to the world a more 'capable, friendly n easy going' version of myself to disguise my weirdness which my older brother constantly berated n smashed me for, if i stimmed or acted in anyway close to resembling my true self then..smack, a crack on the ear and a furious tirade of abuse about how weird i was, that kinda thing happened pretty much everywhere by various other kids and adults, my Nana in particular would constantly talk to my Mother n Father about how there was something "very wrong with that one hmmm" so i learned to disguise myself for short bursts, but found it so ****ing tiring and needed to find places where i could be alone where no one could see me and let out the stims n stuff.

I have only really just in the last few months realised the extent that this ingrained behaviour has affected my ability to be comfortable talking to anyone without unconsciously trying to 'act normal', i am trying to let myself be as genuine as i can be on this site, but even here i find it difficult to not 'fall into character' .

 

[Southern Discomfort]

I'm not even seen myself as different. Sure, I do things which may seen atypical or unusual but I never put the two together; I saw deficits in my behaviour and I adapted to work around them. I never once saw myself as different but I guess I was.

 

[marcadam]

Yes, I've always felt different, right from my earliest memories.

 

[clg114]

When I was a young child, it was easy to see that I was different than the other kids. At first I thought that they were weird and that I was the normal one. It did not take to long to figure out that they were all the same and that I was the oddball. I have always known that I was different, but never knew how or why until I was a older adult.

 

[Jimbo]

Yep. I have always known. I didn't know it had a name until age 44.

 

[unsurewhattoname]

No, I have not. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I realised I was anything more than "shy". Any suggestion that I was any different was dismissed by all the adults as just being shyness so I just accepted that until secondary school where I noticed I wasn't developing socially and the other kids all were, making me think I was stupid as I no longer got it. That age where girls stop playing and instead start manipulating and playing mind games, that's the age I realised.

 

[Jonathan Lees]

no i was fine as a little kid but as I've got older i have felt increasingly more different, its mainly as the maturity gap increases.

 

[Cinnamon115]

I haven't always felt different. I started feeling different from other people my age when I was in 5th grade. I didn't seem to understand things everyone else did or like the same stuff as other people. It wasn't until last january when I started researching into my asperger's that I understood why I was different from other people.

 

[Judge]

Not so much until I was around maybe 8 or 9 years old. When social interactions seem to become more complex to me. At that point I always had the feeling as if I was on the outside looking in and couldn't shake it.

Yet it was something my own parents sensed when I was a toddler. They knew something was up...but just not autism. Neither did the medical professionals who examined me at the time, long before the acknowledgment of Dr. Asperger's research.

 

[Beverly]

Not really but, I didn't know I was on the spectrum until I was older. I just assumed I was a normal variation of a human female. We are each different, everybody is bad at something and good at something. I just thought conversation was what I was bad at so, I had to practice more to get good at it.

I never got the message that I couldn't learn and it was more than a learning deficit so I set out to learn what I assumed my lousy parents didn't teach me because they thought all females should be dumb and totally dependent on a man.