how do deal with my "normal complex?"

[Progster]

Personally, I'm drawn to people who are a bit different.
When I was a small child, I was aware that I was different, but I didn't become aware that if was a 'problem' intil I reached my teens and started to wonder why it was that I couldn't fit in, find friends easily. Then the masking started, followed by anxiety and depression.
Now I no longer feel the need to fit in, I'm perfectly ok to be "strangely strange but oddly normal."

 

[Mr. Stevens]

Personally, I'm drawn to people who are a bit different.
When I was a small child, I was aware that I was different, but I didn't become aware that if was a 'problem' intil I reached my teens and started to wonder why it was that I couldn't fit in, find friends easily. Then the masking started, followed by anxiety and depression.
Now I no longer feel the need to fit in, I'm perfectly ok to be "strangely strange but oddly normal."

Isn't it funny how everything seems to change then? You hit your teens and it's like everyone learned this language you don't understand.

I had the same girlfriend for 3 years in high school, and I still feel I was pretty out of place. But, that's just being different, I guess.

 

[Progster]

Isn't it funny how everything seems to change then? You hit your teens and it's like everyone learned this language you don't understand.

Yes, this is true. I've noticed in one or two of the students I teach, that a couple of them have shown austistic traits to the extent that I thought they might be on the spectrum. Then they reach their teens, and they change, they seem to get a much more social brain. I feel that for me, this never happened; I'm stuck at 12 or 13 years old and all my social skills as an adult were reached through observing and trail and error, rather than an innate ability through having a 'social brain'. In other words, I learned to mask, but for them, it was natural/intuitive, not masking.

 

[Mr. Stevens]

Masking is tough. But, our masks could be worse...