I'm starting to feel like my life is pretty s**t.

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Currently 19, turning 20 in a month and this whole covid quarantine thing has been a period of self-reflection for me... And it made me realise how pathetic my life has been up until this point.

During my childhood I had plenty of friends because around that time, everyone was only interested in talking about, well... Interests. It was much easier for me to make friends even if I was still shy. It was, honestly, a pretty happy period of my life. Then, came puberty and the teen years. I was a mess, barely had any friends (not counting pity ones), barely talked with anyone, didn't have a girlfriend, didn't get invited anywhere and etc. I feel like I might've missed out on a very fond chapter of life that many people experience. The change from kid to adult where you start going out with friends, have your first kiss, you lose your virginity and all that. Didn't do any of that at all and I feel pretty miserable over it.

I recently got diagnosed with austim, which would explain why I was bad at small talk and was only interested in talking about things I had an interest in. Is that an excuse for spending most of my teen years all alone and sad? Probably not, even if I got diagnosed pretty late and didn't know sooner. There was nothing stopping me from trying to get more used to talking with people, making friends and etc. instead of staying inside my home playing games, even if at the time I didn't know what was "wrong" with me.

Does anyone else feel the same and is it common for other people on the spectrum to go through something similar?

I was diagnosed late like you — almost a year ago at 22. (Wow I thought it a much shorter time period.) And I was the same. Very bold as a child, but still shy. I would wander away from my mother to talk with the cashiers at stores because I was bored. Something happened between childhood and adolescent and then I became a lot more reclusive/introverted.

I feel that part of it is just that being a teenager is tough. You’re going through a lot of changes with your body which causes a lot of self confidence issues and your brain is all ogled with a bunch of stuff. You are more aware of yourself and how others perceive you. You don’t want to be “weird”.

Part of it is all societal standard that you absolutely MUST do all these things at a certain time by a certain point. Sure, yeah, you could have done something sooner, but that doesn’t mean you never get to do it just because it wasn’t in high school. Life is different for everything and we all reach goals at different points. Everybody wants to claim high school is the peak of your life when it really isn’t. I didn’t have a good experience and that’s fine.

It’s okay to not have a good high school experience.

What I did at 14-18 isn’t going to define myself as a person ten years later. Being an adult is much more fun anyway lol.

You still are young. The ability to do many things has been shut down by COVID, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen.

I got my diagnosis at the age of 8 and I still suffered terrible social isolation through my teens, even though I've always been only mildly impaired. So having a diagnosis wouldn't have made much difference on your social life, as it didn't with mine.

Being a kid was easy because the social expectations weren't so high and it seemed easier to be included in play if you make some effort (which I did). But at around age 10-11, things started getting complicated; social rules got confusing, social expectations got higher, everybody became judgemental, girls got bitchy and cliquey, and I just got more and more socially rejected no matter how hard I tried to fit in.

They say that the ages between 17 and 24 are the best years of your life (apart from your childhood years), because you're young and you can still get away with being a kid in an adult's body. But I missed out on parties, bars, vacations, etc, because I didn't have the friends to do all those things with. And during these very years I suffered mental illness such as depression and anger because of knowing what I was missing out on. I beat myself up about having this curse (Asperger's) and had frequent emotional outbursts. And I think it was caused by a build-up of emotions from all the social rejection and social deficits I suffered as a younger teen that I was less able to identify at that age. So when I was picked on and treated differently at school for being me, I just put up with it, not realising that it was actually storing resentment and anger that all came pouring out in the first 7 or 8 years of my adult life.

Were you bullied in your adolescent years?

Resonate with everyone's stories, I got diagnosed late and autism wasn't supported in my family even though I had obvious signs ... I am here if anyone wants too PM me and chat.

I am only sad because people wont accept me as I am.

I have to pretend to be normal all the time and they keep calling my special interests 'hobbies' and trying to take them off me.

They want me to be NT...its stressing me out horribly. If I refuse to comply, often because I can't, they think I am being difficult.

Please accept I am not normal, I am ok with it, and I try to control any behaviours that distress people (often through lack of understanding on their part) but please leave my quirks alone.

I like them and sometimes others have liked them too!

Sometimes they can be funny...but i guess it depends on perspective.

I can like people too but it tends to depend.

I find being normal exhausting. I am ok around people whom will let me be weird.

Then again, looking back to before I knew about Autism spectrum disorder, I have lived with autism all my life.

Not only do I have it but so did my dad, although he was more rainman (but not so exaggerated) than sheldon cooper from the big bang. My mother was allistic/neurotypical and I am the hybrid.

It makes for an odd combination...adds a new dimension to life a think, and alternative perspective.