how old were you, when you realized you weren't like

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It is hard to answer as I had no words for "being different".
In kindergarden I was most of the time lying under the table and drawing and the other children were like moving, noisy coloured shadows for me.
This lasted until around age 9 or 10 I guess as I realized that this coloured shadows were in small numbers assembling at one place. I got a little interested in this "phenomena" and watched them from a distance and once searched for a strategy to "approach" them, but I lost interest quite quickly again.
I had no concept of "being different", because I had no concept of socializing and was too much in my own world.
Age around 18 I started feeling "something" as I still was just observing groups but forgetting about them, but the observance was longer and more inter-human contact was demanded and this was a strange concept to me.
I guess here I started to develop a concept of "being...?", but still I was too much drawn into my own world.
Finally I learned that I am different was being diagnosed.
There I learned to formulate that I am different.
Before I didn't had the words to name it, because there was something I could not realize conceptually.
It was like I was in my own world and the others were different, but not me.

Last edited by Eloa on 13 Nov 2012, 7:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Early childhood Everyone else was having fun and i felt like i was trapped.

I was four. My Mom had left me at a friend's place (they had a lot of children) while she went out. I couldn't stand the other kids and the whole situation was weird, so I left and went home. My Mom couldn't believe it that I took off like that. I remember knowing that I shouldn't leave, but feeling that I had to.

Middle school. I mean I always knew I was a little different than other kids, but it didn't really register until then. That was when I started having trouble with friendships and got teased for my interests in science and language, and noticed that people got annoyed with me because of my inability to "take a joke".

I can remember having hyperlexia when I was 3. My mom and my aunt asked me to read the names of the flowers at a flower show in Boston. When I started reading the scientific descriptions in parenthesis everyone around us stood still. That was the beginning of my being embarrassed that I was different. Even 10 years ago when I got my third degree, I was pretending that a test was so hard when I went outside and chatted with the other classmates. It was a breeze, and I was the first one to finish. Teachers in public school would never choose me when I raised my hand because I always knew the answer.

But the kids hated me. The school hired someone from the high school to walk me home because the kids would throw rocks at me. They used to call me "baggypants" because I always wore clothes that were hand me downs. I still wear loose clothes because I hate clothes that are too tight. But they match and are kind of classy. (I think).

My kids were always complaining because of my quirks. I felt that I was a horrible mother because of my idiosyncrasies. When my kids were old enough to be on their own I told them one day that I was no longer thinking of them as my priority. I was now the most important thing in my life and I was going to be different. I was no longer playing any roles, mother, wife, worker, good girl...nope... I was going to be me from now on. Funny, they like me better now too.

I think that it was around first grade or so. I ended up being put in a special reading class, and I somehow knew that I wasn't surrounded by the "normal" kids. The next year I made friends with a mildly disabled girl, and we became buddies. I didn't really notice her disability much, but I noticed to some extent that I was different for wanting to be around her. I also started to notice throughout elementary school that my friends tended to be younger than me, sometimes by as much as 5 years. None of these things really bothered me until around fifth grade, however, when the girls started talking about their bra's and I was still rambling on about building fans lol.

in kindergarden. it got worse in middle school when all the girls but me got "boy-crazy."

I want to add that I also noticed the other kids were different in kindergarten because they ALL cried on the 1st day of school when their parents left at the end of orientation. I stood there trying to understand why they were crying. I didn't cry like the other kids. Normally kids will cry when separated from parents or when they get hurt. I just didn't have that bond with my parents and it never occurred to cry when I got hurt. Did any of you not cry in a normal way as kids?

Kindergarten. I liked to sit under the slide and read books. The other kids did not like me and I had no understanding why. After I got my college degree my mother told me that the elementary school thought I was ret*d until the entire 5th grade took IQ tests and they found out I was the best student at taking IQ tests the school had ever had.

Hmm... Quite late, I think. I had two very good friends in elementary school that I spent every minute with. I didn't interact with the other kids much and my friends were strange, too. It might have been around Grade 4 that I knew I was different. Up until then, I didn't pay attention to them.

I didn't actually think I was different. I was always by myself at school and I didn't notice that the other kids were always playing with each other, until 7th grade when I started to to get self conscious and embarrassed sitting by myself at recess and tried to make myself look invisible. Even then I didn't think I was different, I just thought I didn't know what kind of things the other kids were talking about. I didn't know the same things and I didn't know how to make friends with them. I lived in a world inside my head and I couldn't bridge the gap.
In high school I got picked on. Every time there was a new kid at school I would hope it would be someone like me and I would have a friend, but that never happened and I didn't realy have a concept of what 'like me' was. I eventually quit school and my life's been pretty much messed up since then.

Last edited by Marybird on 13 Nov 2012, 10:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It was middle school for me. Elementary school I was oblivious because I was always off doing my own thing, but for some reason I was always doing something completely different from the rest of the kids. I remember show and tell. Everyone brought fancy little trinkets and random stupid objects (But it was still fun for some reason.) and one day I brought this k'nex airplane that was the size of me that I had worked on for days on end. First grade on "Fun Fridays" where at the end of the day we got to play games and do random things, I was always the one in the opposite side of the room making robotic arms out of construction paper. Everyone thought I was cool for it. There were days where all the other kids tried copying me, and they still all though mine was the best. In fifth grade I spent the moment I walked in class to the moment I walked out making little paper space ships. I was completely oblivious to my teacher getting mad at me too. Did it every day the entire school year and actually made a lot of money off of them from the students. I was kind of considered the class genius, even though I never did any of my work. Also played alone at recess... etc.
MIDDLE SCHOOL... suddenly it was socially unacceptable to do all those things and I was broken. I just drew. A lot. I was considered the best artist in the school, and, well... it was the only thing I ever did. Especially on math homework. That's about the time I looked up at lunch and realized that I was unlike most every other kid I met in my entire life. Felt like an alien, but brushed it off thinking that probably everyone thought the same thing. Man was I wrong. Got bullied a lot too, but whatever.

Shoot, I'm 18 now, my signature hobby isn't consuming my life yet, and what am I doin on the computer? I'mma build something.

My experience with thread question has been similar to this. I was also called weird in and around junior high and highschool. But 'weird' was only one of several derogatory things people said about me. Everybody gets picked on for something during that time in school so I didn't think I was different in that regard. Also, it took a very long time for me to understand what constitutes mental illness. See, my parents have many of the same problems I do, only they were staunchly religious folk and highly suspicious of the medical profession. They refused to consult psychiatrists even when their issues became quite dire. So, from their example, I thought a lot of these things were normal. I thought panic attacks were normal. I thought paranoia was normal.

I guess I just assumed everyone was just as uncomfortable during social interaction as I was. Or I didn't really think about how other people felt at all. It wasn't, and isn't, relevant information to me.

I started to understand the differences in my early 20's when my depression became severe. I knew then that what I was experiencing was not within the realm of normal. It couldn't be.

Last edited by MrStewart on 14 Nov 2012, 12:15 am, edited 2 times in total.

It was definitely middle school for me too, sixth or seventh grade. One day I just really took a look at everyone and realized they weren't laughing with me, they were laughing at me. And I sat down and really took a look at myself in the mirror when I got home and I saw everything that was wrong with me. And my head just fell and from then on I just looked at the ground, did my work quietly and that was my school life until I dropped out in ninth grade and fell into a downward spiral.

Somewhere between 2.5 and 3 years.
Even then I wanted to get the hell away from people and wanted to be by myself.
They also had problems getting me to play with other kids. I used to prefer drawing, playing by myself, playing with animals, or taking things apart instead.

Apparently even at 3 I would wonder off on my own for 24 hours at a time... and adults had no idea where I was.
Til this day they never found my hiding spot where I used to go when it all got too much. Even at that age they used to call me "impossible".

around 5