when did you "wake up"?

Post Reply New Topic

When i say wake up i mean realized you were different and/or disabled and noticed the world around you?

It occurred to me like this I kept thinking about how i can barley remember anything from my past and then i realized its because i couldn't think for myself. Let me put it like this. When was younger not only was i living in my own world but I not only echolalia things that people would say out loud but only in my head and i never really questioned anything. My grandma says that when i was in pk i would tell the ladies in the office everyone business and one time when the other class was having a play i walked up on stage and said it was going to be a great show even though i don't think i knew what was going on. Also when my therapist suggested aspergers traits when i was young my grand mother complained about those people should be on the spectrum with "real autistics". It was not until about a year ago that i relised she was wrong that i was different from other kids and delayed and also that i fit classic autism more ( and that i really needed to understand it) but before i just repeated what she said and even felt mad because she felt mad. I never had my own ideas about it. I read medical books in childrens section of the library since i was little but i didn't understand it i just repeated what the book said at the time i thought i understood but i really didn't. Im still not as nearly aware of the world as i should be but im way different then i was just a few years ago about special needs, in both good ways and bad

This is why i identify with nt kids ( only up to about 4 or maybe 5 unless their kind and the good kind of oblivious) severe autistics and the kids in my camp but they also are like how i was, sometime i wish i could go back and just grew up with this camp and with a more accepting environment. But i know that me being more aware will help nts to understand what its like to to be autistic.

To be perfectly honest, I don't feel differently from those around me. I'm not trying to sound boastful or arrogant, but I'm pretty comfortable in my own skin. God made me who I am, and since He doesn't make junk, I'm happy to be Aspie.

i noticed in school when i would be playing and look up and people would be staring at me, or i would talk to another kid and they would laugh when i didn't say anything funny. i also noticed how my cousins did not want to play with me but they would play with my sister.

i also noticed i was slower in class than other people and always had to have a teacher come and help me. and that i couldnt do my homework like all the other kids.

I am going to say when I was 7 years old.
At 7 I became more responsive and began to start speaking in sentences (from being monosyllabic).
Also I began to notice the developmental differences between me and my cousin who is 4 months older.
Just how much more adept he was at everything and how I needed his help with things.
I became a lot more aware of the type of clinical care I was being given and testing being done.
Became fully aware that I was in a school for developmentally disabled kids.
Stuff like that.

I discovered I was different around the age of 5 when I started infant school. I had difficulty fitting in and was often punished for my "bad behaviour" in class... the problem was that I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong. I thought I was well behaved but apparently not.

The first day of school. I had problems adapting to a new set of rules, sitting still, doing as the teacher said and so on; the other children did not.

I don't really know.
I mean, I have always been too occupied with my interests to really notice I was "different".
As a child I didn't pay much attention to the differences between me and the other children.
I guess I became really aware of my difference when I was diagnosed with Asperger's at 13 (I had been diagnosed with ADD previously as well, but didn't know that during my childhood) but looking back I realize that maybe I had seen the differences but I just didn't pay much attention to them. I remember that when I was 5 in kindergarten a teacher had sent me to another teacher to ask her something. When I got close to that other teacher I forgot what I had to ask her and just noticed the kids that were around them and I remember I felt what now I'd call anxiety due to having forgot what I had to say and being in front of all those people. Or when I was 6 and I entered my classroom for the first time and all the other children started smiling and talking all together telling me my name and asking me questions. I felt really overwhelmed and wanted to just sit alone in a quite place. I didn't think they were the signs of my "difference" back then. But as a child I didn't have much self-awareness so I am not surprised.
People see me as an "outsider" and my being an "outsider" allows me to observe the world without being bothered by people I do not care about. People have described me as a person that seems to have fun observing humans and that only observes them to have fun. Like Ryuk from Death Note, I guess? Observing other people can be really funny at times anyway. I'm not saying that I make fun of them; I just think that it can be funny observing them without teasing them. People know that I don't tease them and I found out, after being bullied during middle school, that most people actually respect me as being an "outsider" and that my old classmates were just jerks that liked to pick on disabled people (I looked more disabled then than now; also I know they liked to pick on disabled people because they also picked on a kid with Down's syndrome and other classmates who had OCD/anxious traits).
My being an "outsider" gives people the impression that I don't notice what is going on, but I actually notice most things (except the class gossip maybe, most of the times I just learn about from other people, I hardly ever notice what new gossip is my class). My karate teacher described me as "one who looks like she doesn't notice anything about what is going on around her but actually notices everything".

I got on a bus one night when I was in my 20's and as I walked back to sit down the driver started yelling at me. He said people like me were what was wrong with the world and he kicked me off the bus and I had to walk home alone in the dark.
That was when I realized that I needed to say hello and thank you to people, that they were human and I was capable of hurting their feelings. Before that I was not very self aware and oblivious to other people around me.
The bus driver was wrong though, I wasn't a horrible person, I was just in my own world and didn't have a concept of relating to other people. It was really an awakening to learn that my actions, like not greeting people, could hurt them and make them angry.
Still, when I am out I prefer to not acknowledge other people, but I make the effort to do so.

I don't recall being conscious of it in kindergarten, but I definitely remember by first grade realizing that I didn't know how to fit in with all the other kids, and by second grade, I was already fully immersed in isolation from the peer group, feeling distinctly "walled off" from other people, wanting to make connections and not having any idea how. From that point forward, that was just the way life was (is).