"You're normal, but you're so not normal..."

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Hello everyone,

I'm Adam, born in the U.S. but lived in SE Asia most of my life (where I live now). I know I am different to most people I know, and despite being a complete loner, I'm happy that way. However, I've been seeking understanding of what I am and I wanted to ask for my first post, how many of you feel as if you can relate to being "normal, but not normal"?


Do you ever feel normal, but then upon introspection, feel as if you're from a different planet? (sorry, I like the name of the forum).

Do you feel that you look like everyone else, but on the inside you're a complete stranger, even to yourself?

Do you ever find yourself asking "What am I?" "Where did I come from?" and "Why doesn't anyone see things the way I do?"

Do you wonder if you'll ever find peace deep down inside, or will end your life in a confused mass of whatever it is that's different about us?


I apologize for the potentially strange first post. Autism and the like isn't widely well known, accepted, or even thought of as real from where I live, and after my first relationship disaster (first and only girlfriend), it's got me wondering a little bit about who I am, and if others are around thinking and wondering the same thing. Most people say I am just a little awkward, but deep down inside, I am convinced that I am a fundamentally and completely different person than pretty much everyone I know or have encountered.

Alright, I'll be quiet now.
-Adam_K93

What country are you from, Adam? I love geography.

Yes, I'd agree. If somebody looks at me or talks to me for a minute or two, I might be able to seem normal, but any more than that and people can spot something "off" about me. As for actually feeling normal, very rarely. I feel like an outsider in everything I do, like there's one thing I'm doing or not doing that is keeping me from being able to be like everyone else. I feel so close to the NT world, yet so far away, and it makes me very depressed. I try to understand people, but I can't, and it's incredibly frustrating and makes me feel incredibly alone.

I wrote a poem on this topic
way back in the olden days
when I was in high school,
long before I discovered I was autistic.

"Do you ever find yourself asking "What am I?" "Where did I come from?" and "Why doesn't anyone see things the way I do?""

Whether you like it or not, you actually define yourself through other people.

I am now starting to realize I've been engaged in a thirty five year conversation with myself and why do I know that because can't make myself understood by other people.

That is a problem that I am currently attempting to remedy.

Where are you in SE Asia, I live on Southern China.

Well, I am "from" Los Angeles, but I am Sino-Khmer and I live in Cambodia. Interestingly enough, the reason I still live in Cambodia is because it's so cheap that I can live alone and rarely interact with people and yet still pay for my existence. It's a lot less stressful here than the hustle and bustle of the U.S.




You put the words right in my mouth. That's how I feel exactly. I've lived in 2 countries now, and despite the two societies being extremely different, I realize that I am like none of them and it does get confusing and frustrating at times too.




This is how I feel too! Everything I do and say is based on how I know other people will react, not the way I understand or feel things inside. It gets to be tiresome at times since I genuinely have no idea how other people will react to things I say and I've offended a great many people before by simple actions or words.



Thank you all so far for the replies, I really feel like I'm talking to people who understand me now and it's very refreshing.

Hello and welcome,

All my life......


Not really for me. I feel like I know myself at the important levels just fine. It's others that I cannot get. To me, other people are like flesh machines. I just can't get the emotional content from them.


Every day as long as I remember. Even used to fantasize that I was adopted or had a secret twin. One to explain not being part of something I felt, but could not connect to. The other to have some sort of shared something.


This is not an easy question. I will say this, I firmly believe that this contributed greatly to my attempted suicide in '93. The difference is that you have access to much more informed services now. Back then, nobody had a clue. But, yeah, I can be at peace with myself. It's the world I cannot have peace with at this time.

I myself have been in the suicidal realm on more than one occasion and know it all too well. Mainly it's why I was asking if there was ever peace at the "end of the tunnel".

I like how you said it though, peace with yourself, not with the world.

Thank you

welcome to WP...first off. interesting first post.

as for me, most of the time used to want to go to my parents for those kinds of questions. first two especially. as a younger person. i figured they're well, my parents, they're responsible for my existence...they should know, right? wrong.

every single time i ask them why i am what i am, existing and all i get nothing but jokes from my mother and aggressive avoiding and "ugh, not this again" from my father. so i don't ask them, i never will get them to be interested in the question.

they really don't know why they had a kid, huh? to give their parents grandchildren? to appease god? with my dad's control freak tendencies you'd think he had a son just so he could get the vacuuming done while he was taking a shower so he could have more time to watch fox news or the lakers.

maybe they're not used to the question simply because they never asked it themselves, or something. if so...poor guys. they literally do not know why they exist. or at least have tried to understand.

once more the answers will have to come from within me....again.

You're welcome. But, there is no 'end of the tunnel' as you call it. Look at it this way, you're heads and shoulders with your information at such a young age. Knowing the 'why' is more important than the what. But, strap yourself in because it's a long train ride and Sybil's at the switch. Not that you're schizophrenic. It's just the world (at least to me) seems to be. People confuse me and seem irrational. And, they are the ones driving the social engines we have to engage in.

I can't say I've EVER felt normal. I was in a car wreck with some amnesia when I was four, and became convinced that the people calling themselves my parents had picked up the wrong girl from the hospital. Then I saw Escape To Witch Mountain and thought I was a marooned alien for a bit. I don't think these things now, but the feeling of being "out of place" has never left me.

I was only diagnosed with autism last year. I've told a few friends, who have all said something along the lines of "but you look so normal!" My life has been a constant struggle to act like normal people, because I was bullied as a child for being weird. I don't feel a stranger to myself, but everyone else seems strange and inscrutable to me. I often can't figure out why people do the things they do.

Constantly. When I got the diagnosis, it was like I had discovered the Rosetta Stone--something to finally make sense of the puzzle of my life.

I'm still working on that one. I think I feel more at peace with myself than I did pre-diagnosis, or at least feel like I can stop blaming myself for not fitting in. I think the REAL peace may come when I stop trying to force myself to be some kind of fake neurotypical, and accept the person I really am: a bit weird, goofy, spacy, but also a loyal friend, hard worker, and compassionate to people who suffer.

I know I am unique, but I don't feel like an alien. I know others think and feel the same as me because I'm just as human as they are, it's just there are a few odd things about the way I think and feel that are different to others, and even to other Aspies too, for example:-

-I feel an overwhelming sense of humiliation when somebody says "sshh" to me, but not "shut up" or "be quiet" or "hush", etc.

-Clothing tags make me feel sick, just like how seeing puke or poop would make people feel sick.

-I get offended if somebody wants to listen to the TV when I'm talking.

-I loathe when people say "you're an adult not a child" because it feels like an unnecessary criticism to me.

Why do those 4 things upset me, you ask? I do not know myself. They just do. They are such mundane things that get said to everybody nearly every day, something that isn't meant to be mean at all, yet I happen to spend my whole life being offended by these things. My close family knows what weird things offend me, but other people don't, and I don't expect them to because it is not what normal people get offended by. But I don't like to tell people, because I don't want my boyfriend and friends to feel like walking on eggshells around me. So I've just got to be offended in silence, and just let it pass.

Yeah that's how I feel too. People tend to think I am normal at first glance but being honest I think it doesn't take them long to figure out there's something "off" about me. I hate having an invisible disability because they don't know that you would need some understanding/help but at the same time they would not want to see more. It's like with jobs. I'm sure they look at me and see that gap but I can't easily excuse it. I have to make the decision on whether to disclose and I don't know which employers see it or not since it's not an obvious thing. The worst part about invisible disability is I got help too late. No one really noticed even me so I got help with jobs late in life. Just like them I guess I thought I would "grow out" of my deficiencies.
I've always lived in the same country but I've traveled a bit and it doesn't seem like I fit into any of the other places I've been either..although I seem to fit a bit more than here sometimes I still don't have a place to connect to.