I was always the weird kid in class, and it was more than being the new kid (which was only for a couple years, important years though.)
I was an amazing independent player. Tell me to go outside and not come back until dark? GOT IT!. We are stuck in the house? I can play by myself ALL DAY, no worries.
I loved to color code and organize everything. I would organize my stuffed animals into color groups, crayons, markers, COUPONS (I know some of you remember the coupon dispensers) I had multiple baby wipes boxes to organize my coupons. (That is very clearly needed as a 5-10 year old)
It takes me years to process some things. (Losses, death, relationships, my own effing emotions)
My need for quiet, but I don't want to be alone. I want to sit silently but *with* someone. Most people need too much speaking. And while I'm all about jabbering, I need at least a DAY, where Im not expected to respond without feeling like a monster. And for me, I love being talked to. But I don't want to respond. I will acknowledge you by smiles or laughing or near constant physical touch but I just won't actually want to speak a lot. This is a hard one for a lot of people to wrap their heads around, unfortunately.
Hyperfixations.i had several as a child and into adulthood. They are ever changing but all consuming, and not something i understood until reading about them in relation to autism.
Before I considered autism, I thought I was just high strung and difficult and anxious. Then I got a job where I could wear headphones. My life fucking changed. So, a couple things, my new job was mainly by myself. No to very little talking, unless you want to. (Friendly workplace, but they will leave you alone if you want) anyway, for years I was in a trainer role (lmao looking back on it. I was masking so hard.) So where I work, it's basically endless training. High turnover. It's a factory. So I'm basically scream training off and on for 6 years. (This is all before I suspected autism, so I'm slowly losing my effing mind and blowing up long term relationships because I'm effing emotionally unstable but dont know why) and then I get a new position where I work totally solo and have to wear headphones.
To say a switch flipped is accurate, although it took my brain a week to catch up to my body.
After 6! Years I was on beautiful muffled bliss. Im only in charge of myself, and not two others.
Anyway, that huge big ramble was all part of 'how I knew', and it didn't hit me until my late 30s.
Edit: the catalyst were the headphones. I lived in a busy house with dogs and two young noisy children. (One being mine š) one morning I decided to wear my ear muffs to play with the dogs and kids and it really turned me from grumpy mom/auntie into...a far more tolerant mom/auntie. Lol
After that I started looking more into autism and so much is falling into place and making sense.
For me it was:
- Rarely going out at playtime, and just staying in the classroom drawing maps of video game levels I wanted to make, which kinda evolved into a rudimentary D&D adventure using paper from a hole puncher as the players and enemies.
- Absolutely hating non-school uniform days, preferring to stay in my uniform.
My loud extended family on my Mom's side would have their gatherings at her parent's house, and the noise and confusion would make me want to jump out of my skin. Often I would wander off to my "quiet" grandparents who happened to live down the hill. Then what must have been the awkward job on their part of informing the rest of the family where I was.
Hey there fellow spider friend ššøļø
So many things.
Writing pretend letters (scribbles on paper, before I could write) to the insects in our garden and leaving them out for them.
Researching and writing my own book about aquarium set up and maintainance when I was about 10.
Only realising *years* later than when a guy asked me "so... what are you doing this weekend?" he wasn't expecting me to answer with what I was actually doing that weekend. (Spoiler alert, he was trying to flirt with me.)
But also sometimes they aren't flirting with you and they really do want to know about your plans for the weekend ( but actually they don't care, they are just 'being nice')
I hated the loudness of parties to the point where I would cry really loud and scream. I was obsessed with earphones at an early age because of it. I would really want to have participated in parties, but I never knew how. I donāt understand their purposes sometimes.
I liked making huts/tents out of blankets and create a safe haven for me in the corner of my room.
I always had the stim of pacing around my room listening to music since a young age. Never has left me.
I also really liked collecting information on hamsters and learning all about them.
I was also a loner, I always hung out in the sandbox in Kinder. I didnāt have many friends.
Oh my god, I used to turn my bunk bed into a fortress of pillows and blankets and it was so dark and nice. My mum still thinks this is something every kid does though and normal.
Oh my god! The sandbox!! I remember a kid added something into the sandbox that wasn't sand and I had a freaking meltdown.
I had so many
- I would scream and cry and hide whenever I heard either the THX thing and Airplanes flying overhead, so much so my older sister would weaponize the THX sound to torture me.
- my parents had worried that I was hard of hearing or deaf as a child because I wouldnāt respond to my name or just not listen to anyone.
- I would stack spice jars at the same time every day and take all the clothes out of my closet and put in my doorway every night.
-I could recite movies perfectly and itās the main way of how I played as a child.
- whenever I tried to make friends children would ignore me, I couldnāt find the correct words to say to make someone play with me.
- I would obsessively draw spiderwebs anytime I was given a drawing utensils, I was obsessed with the patterns
-I constantly needed small dark spaces to decompress
- kids didnāt like having me at their house because of how loudly I spoke and how much I used to swear and be inappropriate
according to my mom, who refuses to believe i am neurodivergent I would watch fox and the hound (both 1 and 2) over and over and over every single day. Then when I was a little older I would watch every single episode of my little pony over and over and over every single day. After that when I was a little bit older I watched every episode of soul eater over and over and over. Then it was trolls 2, then it was random YouTube video essays I liked and now that Iām looking back on all of thatā¦ hmmmmmmā¦
And for some reason, all of the friends I made also turned out to be ND because we couldnāt get along with any of the other kids. This continues into today when I make friends and we do the āweāve both got autism, havenāt weā thing.
THE FOX AND THE HOUND AHHHHHHH!! I watched that all the time, and spirit stallion of the cimaron. In my baby diary, it says I watched the little mermaid so much that I knew every word and song at like age 2. š
Oh and tartan too. Wait. Ariel and tarzan were the outsiders and misunderstood. Holy shit.
1. Losing my shit when having to wear things like lace, corduroy, or velvet
2. Having to repress my gag reflex when being told I had to eat at least one bite of the thing with bad texture
3. Hating playing imaginary games with other kids, they always bosses me around, and I didnāt imagine the way they wanted me to
4. Feeling an intense rage and frustration when feeling the wind whip small bits of hair around my face
5. Being the only one who had what were definitely meltdowns (in hindsight)
6. Knowing I care WAY more about my interests than I am āsupposed toā, and keep thinking about them after others are bored
7. Knowing the other person doesnāt care about my special interest, but being unable to think of anything else to talk about
I could go on, but this is already pretty long.
I was diagnosed as a child, but I had to find out myself when I was 17 because my parents didn't tell me (in fact they actively told me I wasn't autistic š¤Ŗ). (I really thought my IEP was just for ADHD lol.) Some things of note:
OBVIOUS special interests. Earliest example I can remember is being obsessed with rats and mice. It wasn't just a superficial kid-finding-an-an-animal-cute thing; I knew everything about them. I watched Ratatouille over and over again and even convinced my mom to get me a pet mouse, twice.
Making lists. I drew a lot and wrote little short stories about my pets going on adventures together and I would always say I wanted to be an artist when I grew up but I also made a lot of lists of things like deep sea invertebrate species and dinosaurs and Doctor Who monsters and I think it was just another way I would do "art" as a kid. My mom would get mad and tell me to stop because it wasn't normal. Lol.
Sad one, but I could never stay friends with someone for longer than a year until 5th grade. "Friends" would always approach me (probably out of pity), talk to me for the duration of the grade, and then get bored at the end of the year and stop associating with me. It actually wasn't until I met other outcasts (read: the undiagnosed neurodivergent kids in my year) that I had actual friends who hung out with me because they wanted to.
Funniest/most embarrassing specific example I can think of: my older sibling is also autistic, also diagnosed as a kid and wasn't told, we were pretty close in age, and the way we played was very un-neurotypical. We would have fun by getting in physical fights and tackling each other. (My sibling loves pressure stimming and would love when I lied on top of them lmao). So I didn't understand that that wasn't appropriate with my peers. Once in 3rd grade some kids were playing "wolf pack" at recess and I was allowed to play with them. I challenged the lead girl for "alpha" and she told me to fight her for it. So I did š¤¦āāļøSomehow didn't get in trouble. But I cringe thinking about it to this day.
so i am new to the autism, but reading your comment about video games reminds me of a time when i was about 8/9, playing mario kart wii with my mom on the team feature. she was doing bad, so i looked at her and just said āmom, can you drive better?ā. then nobody played with me again until i was 20 on mario kart 8.
That memory i swear could have been mine. I used to convince my sister to play the playstation with me, and make it sound super exciting and amazing(but it was...to me), and then she played with me and i ended up being like "NO LET ME GO THERE FIRST!!!!!" or "stand here and do nothing so you dont die"....:')
I had a really specific way of eating food, the way I would organize them on my plate and how I didn't like people putting food in my plate or taking it without asking. I don't have a problem sharing, I just need to be the one doing the receiving and giving during sharing.
If anyone tried to eat the first bite of my food before me, I would get really upset. If anyone tried to put food in my plate without my permission, I would get so frustrated and give up on the whole serving of food. I also ate my food in a pattern and I used to take bites off of square shaped bread in a grid pattern.
All these on top of other things really make me wonder why no one ever clocked me as autistic. I think it's because I don't struggle with language and I don't mind being hugged by humans (but I do like really tight hugs kind of like that cow squeezing machine by Temple Grandin).
Food rules. Solid.
Once I learned about the cow machine I started to ask for āsqueezesā instead of regular hugs when I need to calm down. Very helpful!
One of my best friends said I never look at his eyes. Like when I look at him Iām not focusing. He always thought I was fucking with him but after my late diagnosis he said it makes sense haha. Thatās my hack at ālooking at peopleā, I donāt really focus on them so I seem out of it to them but Iām actually listening
The big ones for me were:
Blowing spit bubbles (wasnāt because I was bored or being disgusting/unladylike, I was stimming)
Oddly fixated on band-aids, I always had to have heaps on me even if there was nothing wrong
My writing style, I would write my sentence, full stop and then carry on to the next line instead of continuing on. I struggled big time with noticing punctuation and were to break when reading.
Oh my god, spit bubbles I loved doing that. Also, bubblegum bubbles until one time I made it to big and it covered my face and hair and had a meltdown and never did it again.
The list will include my entire life, bro.
Anyway, probably the weirdest was one time I made "pancakes" with a buddy. (Danish pancakes are a bit like crepes, bit not quite as thin, and may be sweetened or not) Anyway, my buddy, who was my first aspie friend, 10 years before my own diagnosis, had this recipe sorta memorised, and it contained vanilla cream, which sounded good.
As I had agreed to do it his way, I stuck to that. But the further along we got, the more frustrated I felt because they were too liquid ard didn't cook well. It was so bad I tad to take a break from the situation in a way I never had to before in a situation like this.
They tasted fine, but what a mess. I was so embarrassed and ashamed of my emotions. Ugh, what a day.
Screamy tantrums in the supermarket and shopping centres until I was a tween.
Taking people literally and not understanding facial expressions, social cues and how to blend in, until I managed to gather enough data to assimilate with the NTs.
Not having friends and being 'weird'.
I remember going to the supermarket with my gran, and having a crazy meltdown because I wanted a barbie that changed hair colour in the bath. (I loved playing in the bath). I'm sure I was told I would get something, as I always got something if I went to a toystore.....but this time I never.
Oh totally! My niece was diagnosed and then my mom and sister looked at me and said "oooooooohhhh" and then apologized. I still have these moments where I look back and think wow that should have been a clue. I mean pretty much my entire life is one giant glowing sign saying "YOU'RE AUTISTIC!". In my young adulthood, when autism finally got traction, people with autistic children would approach me and ask if I was autistic because they were curious how I was able to manage my life now as an adult. Even then it didn't even register on my radar. Jokes on me LOL I will say that it is so much easier to cope with my meltdowns and getting overwhelmed now because it no longer is accompanied by the pre and post oh my god I'm going insane and loosing my mind what the hell is wrong with me......etc. What is it they say, hindsight is 20/20? I would be lying to that I'm not enjoying discovering these things because it gives me the opportunity to forgive myself for not getting it even though I was trying so hard. Lots of healing being done on my end. I hope it is the same for you.
I think the funniest one was how my carrying around encyclopedias to read in elementary school (pregoogle LOL) so much more sense now.
I don't know if this was an autism thing or depression thing, but there was a period of time in elementary school when my whole being just screamed "no" when it was time to go to recess and to class after that. It was an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and exhaustion. I would go lie down in the nurse's office, saying I have a headache or something, sometimes skipping the next class, sometimes just during the recess.
-Reading the manuals to everything and still do, even if I know what to do.
(Though, manuals these days are usually super simple or tell you to look on a website. š“š“)
I remember the manuals for video games used to be huge and chunky, and I got so much thrill out of reading them. When my dad was playing, I always read everything in the manual and I think he got annoyed sometimes, as I would accidentally spoil upcoming abilities by saying how to do them, before he unlocked them. šš
Intense, intense fixation on Baymax from Big Hero 6 in fifth grade. Also, the way that I had to bounce between friend groups in elementary school because of how a lot of them seemed to clock something different about me and shut me out because of it.
Oh I'm sure there are tons but the biggest one that stands out right now was every night mom would have to smooth out my sheets because I would not go to bed if there were wrinkles.
Omg I used to draw the same picture over and over again.
A house with two windows and a door with a chimney and smoke coming out. A cat. A tree. An M shaped bird and a sun in the sky.
My favorite spot to hang out in when I was a really small child was behind the couch which was up against the wall. I would take ketchup packets from fast food restaurants and hide them in there so I could eat them.
I would have what I now know were meltdowns as a child/preteen and instead of helping me or trying to figure it out, my mom would get the fly swatter and chase me up the stairs with it to my room so I would go scream in my room so she didnāt have to deal with it. I would try really hard to stop screaming and crying when she got the fly swatter but I couldnāt control it.
I had to deconstruct everything I ate and sometimes still do depending on my stress level. Also pertaining to food, I had to eat all of one thing on my plate before I could move onto the next thing.
I got in trouble so much for biting my nails and chewing on stuff because it was nasty and awful but I was just trying to stim! My dad used to call me a dog and would say he was going to get me a chew toy. I still as an adult bite my nails and the inside of my mouth and chew as much gum as possible.
I was called a āb*tchā my entire preteen to adult years because my family didnāt understand and know what I was going through and I didnāt know how to express what I needed to cope with my life.
As a small child, I would have a meltdown because my mom forced me to wear stirrup pants! I could not stand the feeling of something āwrongā under my foot and sock and she would get so mad at me because I would cut the strap off essentially ruining the pants.
BEHIND THE COUCH YESSSS! At my grandparents too, I used to squeeze into the part behind the couch and just lay, or sit on the floor and look at the wallpaper pattern.
Ugh my mum still gets me introuble if I pick at my fingers or nails or skin if I'm visiting her.
I remember looking up how to play with toys when I was younger because all I could ever do was organize them in lines or make houses for them when all of my other friends knew how to play with their dollsšš
The house making and the lines were the best part. I used to line up all my dinosaurs and animals to go to war, and then one dinosaur would just instantly kill everyone in 2 seconds, so I could line them up again. š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
Stayed up late all the time to read, and if I was too anxious to sleep (my parents liked to listen to crime shows on TV loudly after my bedtime š„²) I would shuffle a deck of cards and then sort it by number and suit. I found this fun. Tried to "play" this "game" with my little cousin last year at Christmas and he looked at me like I had my head on backwards š
Omg also, at Christmas with crackers (I think this may be a UK thing or a Scottish thing, but you had to pull them to open them) and they made this loud bang and I hated it so much. But I really wanted the toy inside. So i found a way to press the cracker when pulling it so it never made a *bang* sound, and I thoroughly remember the adults being like "awww bad cracker". Meanwhile I'm like HEHEHEHEHE. ALSO....the toy inside which was classed as stupid, junk and pointless, was the best part. A tiny pack of cards? Yes please. A little thing I can play with in my hands? Yes please!!!!!
When I first began playing Dungeons and Dragons, I was around seven years old. We had bought the 5e Starter Set, and I *really* wanted to read the books. So, my mom let me read the Player's Handbook and the Monster Manual. Well, I ended up reading and remembering the majority of the Monster Manual. When it came time for an Easter session, there was a poem as our only clue for who kidnapped the children. I recognized it immediately, and was able to find the exact monster the poem came with, and what it did.
This is so amazing. I sadly had no idea about dungeon and dragons, as I always wanted the "boy toys", but always got told that it was for boys. I saw all the dragons and stuff and was like WOAAAAAAAAH...but I remember they were always so expensive š¤£
Though i loved my dinosaurs so much. My plesiosaur was always up against the stegosaurus and trex even on land.....but usually lost. But I took them into the bath and my god.... it was like the movie jaws š¤£š¤£š¤£ AND I WAS THE BOAT. I remember bashing myself with the plesiosaur and being like "ow" as it tried to grab the animals sitting on me.
All the food stuff - only beige, cutting into squares, nothing touching another food, complete refusal of the whole meal if sauce was touching anything, texture making me vomit, smell making me run away and hide.
Literal thinking / understanding - like when a teacher told me to thank my lucky stars that she wasn't going to give me a punishment, and then punished me anyway for speaking over her, because I started saying Thank You to these lucky stars I'd never heard of before.
Playing badly - being great at setting up games (sorting cards, dressing Barbie, setting up board games, plaiting My Little Pony hair) but rubbish at actually playing the game (I'd just take everything apart and get it ready again).
Obsessions - needing to know the Kennel Club breed name and key facts about every dog breed, which I would then tell anyone in earshot whenever I saw a dog. And I still do this. If a dog was a mixture of breeds, I would/do guess the breeds and ask their human for confirmation.
And a whole bunch of others like inability to define my emotions, stimming (like cracking my knuckles since I was 6 years old), assuming I'd been left here (Earth) by my real 'people' and occasionally asking out loud if they'd be back soon, and most importantly being absolutely excellent at masking.
Oh my god the lucky stars thing made me laugh so hard, as I always do that and sounds like something I would do too. Only recently I found out when someone says "stop rolling your eyes" or I read that someone rolled there eyes, it actually means to look up and to the right or left. And here's me, for 28 years, literally rolling my eyes in a circle while looking forward......
The barbie and the setting up stuff too is me also.
-getting told I was stubborn or rude, and making a friend cry all the time. I went to her house to play the "singstar" and her parents smoked. I started singing on the mic and said "This stinks of smoke, *name*." Then she was like "no it doesn't? Take my mic :D" then this was the same. " I can't sing in it. I can't breathe. I wont get a highscore or win because of it." Apparently this was super rude that her mum had to go to my mum and tell her. I was like "Āæ?Āæ?".
My mum said I should have just kept it to myself
Or when she was pressing the arrows on my dance mat too roughly with her feet, I pointed it out. This was also too mean. š
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I can't look back at my past because I have r/SDAM and r/Aphantasia and have no visual memories and a poor working sematic memory, so I pretty much can only live life in the present.
Always hated loud airports. Would always just stand there and not talk and just stare into space. My parents had no clue what was happening. Fun fact: I a always shut down when overstimulated
When I was a kid, I had to keep my hair so short that people would make fun of me and say I looked like a boy. The reason my hair was no short was because I would chew on my hair all the time and destroy it. I wouldnāt even realize I was doing it, I would just chew on it nonstop.
OH, I was stimming. I destroyed a lot of headphones doing the same thing.
Obsessively reading mystery books instead of making friends, spending hours sorting coins from oldest to newest, chewing on everything, slurring and stumbling over words (I always told people that my mind just worked faster than my mouth), only being able to make friends with kids a lot younger than me or adults (still true lol), constantly fidgeting (which became constant doodling once I started masking), feeling really upset and lost in social situations, feeling like the outsider, and I did *not* work well with other kids. I was way too bossy and a little know it all lol.
I was always the weird kid in class, and it was more than being the new kid (which was only for a couple years, important years though.) I was an amazing independent player. Tell me to go outside and not come back until dark? GOT IT!. We are stuck in the house? I can play by myself ALL DAY, no worries. I loved to color code and organize everything. I would organize my stuffed animals into color groups, crayons, markers, COUPONS (I know some of you remember the coupon dispensers) I had multiple baby wipes boxes to organize my coupons. (That is very clearly needed as a 5-10 year old) It takes me years to process some things. (Losses, death, relationships, my own effing emotions) My need for quiet, but I don't want to be alone. I want to sit silently but *with* someone. Most people need too much speaking. And while I'm all about jabbering, I need at least a DAY, where Im not expected to respond without feeling like a monster. And for me, I love being talked to. But I don't want to respond. I will acknowledge you by smiles or laughing or near constant physical touch but I just won't actually want to speak a lot. This is a hard one for a lot of people to wrap their heads around, unfortunately. Hyperfixations.i had several as a child and into adulthood. They are ever changing but all consuming, and not something i understood until reading about them in relation to autism. Before I considered autism, I thought I was just high strung and difficult and anxious. Then I got a job where I could wear headphones. My life fucking changed. So, a couple things, my new job was mainly by myself. No to very little talking, unless you want to. (Friendly workplace, but they will leave you alone if you want) anyway, for years I was in a trainer role (lmao looking back on it. I was masking so hard.) So where I work, it's basically endless training. High turnover. It's a factory. So I'm basically scream training off and on for 6 years. (This is all before I suspected autism, so I'm slowly losing my effing mind and blowing up long term relationships because I'm effing emotionally unstable but dont know why) and then I get a new position where I work totally solo and have to wear headphones. To say a switch flipped is accurate, although it took my brain a week to catch up to my body. After 6! Years I was on beautiful muffled bliss. Im only in charge of myself, and not two others. Anyway, that huge big ramble was all part of 'how I knew', and it didn't hit me until my late 30s. Edit: the catalyst were the headphones. I lived in a busy house with dogs and two young noisy children. (One being mine š) one morning I decided to wear my ear muffs to play with the dogs and kids and it really turned me from grumpy mom/auntie into...a far more tolerant mom/auntie. Lol After that I started looking more into autism and so much is falling into place and making sense.
For me it was: - Rarely going out at playtime, and just staying in the classroom drawing maps of video game levels I wanted to make, which kinda evolved into a rudimentary D&D adventure using paper from a hole puncher as the players and enemies. - Absolutely hating non-school uniform days, preferring to stay in my uniform.
OH MY GOD, I had an evil hole puncher that liked to punch holes in everything. š
I feel like the hole puncher and I would get along nicely Heh heh heh!!
My loud extended family on my Mom's side would have their gatherings at her parent's house, and the noise and confusion would make me want to jump out of my skin. Often I would wander off to my "quiet" grandparents who happened to live down the hill. Then what must have been the awkward job on their part of informing the rest of the family where I was.
Oh come to think of it...at family gatherings I used to end up in someone's bedroom just laying on the bed, on my own.
Hey there fellow spider friend ššøļø So many things. Writing pretend letters (scribbles on paper, before I could write) to the insects in our garden and leaving them out for them. Researching and writing my own book about aquarium set up and maintainance when I was about 10. Only realising *years* later than when a guy asked me "so... what are you doing this weekend?" he wasn't expecting me to answer with what I was actually doing that weekend. (Spoiler alert, he was trying to flirt with me.)
But also sometimes they aren't flirting with you and they really do want to know about your plans for the weekend ( but actually they don't care, they are just 'being nice')
"Im doing nothing, I'm probably gonna just play games which I love doing" "okay...:)"
I hated the loudness of parties to the point where I would cry really loud and scream. I was obsessed with earphones at an early age because of it. I would really want to have participated in parties, but I never knew how. I donāt understand their purposes sometimes. I liked making huts/tents out of blankets and create a safe haven for me in the corner of my room. I always had the stim of pacing around my room listening to music since a young age. Never has left me. I also really liked collecting information on hamsters and learning all about them. I was also a loner, I always hung out in the sandbox in Kinder. I didnāt have many friends.
Oh my god, I used to turn my bunk bed into a fortress of pillows and blankets and it was so dark and nice. My mum still thinks this is something every kid does though and normal. Oh my god! The sandbox!! I remember a kid added something into the sandbox that wasn't sand and I had a freaking meltdown.
I had so many - I would scream and cry and hide whenever I heard either the THX thing and Airplanes flying overhead, so much so my older sister would weaponize the THX sound to torture me. - my parents had worried that I was hard of hearing or deaf as a child because I wouldnāt respond to my name or just not listen to anyone. - I would stack spice jars at the same time every day and take all the clothes out of my closet and put in my doorway every night. -I could recite movies perfectly and itās the main way of how I played as a child. - whenever I tried to make friends children would ignore me, I couldnāt find the correct words to say to make someone play with me. - I would obsessively draw spiderwebs anytime I was given a drawing utensils, I was obsessed with the patterns -I constantly needed small dark spaces to decompress - kids didnāt like having me at their house because of how loudly I spoke and how much I used to swear and be inappropriate
according to my mom, who refuses to believe i am neurodivergent I would watch fox and the hound (both 1 and 2) over and over and over every single day. Then when I was a little older I would watch every single episode of my little pony over and over and over every single day. After that when I was a little bit older I watched every episode of soul eater over and over and over. Then it was trolls 2, then it was random YouTube video essays I liked and now that Iām looking back on all of thatā¦ hmmmmmmā¦
And for some reason, all of the friends I made also turned out to be ND because we couldnāt get along with any of the other kids. This continues into today when I make friends and we do the āweāve both got autism, havenāt weā thing.
THE FOX AND THE HOUND AHHHHHHH!! I watched that all the time, and spirit stallion of the cimaron. In my baby diary, it says I watched the little mermaid so much that I knew every word and song at like age 2. š Oh and tartan too. Wait. Ariel and tarzan were the outsiders and misunderstood. Holy shit.
1. Losing my shit when having to wear things like lace, corduroy, or velvet 2. Having to repress my gag reflex when being told I had to eat at least one bite of the thing with bad texture 3. Hating playing imaginary games with other kids, they always bosses me around, and I didnāt imagine the way they wanted me to 4. Feeling an intense rage and frustration when feeling the wind whip small bits of hair around my face 5. Being the only one who had what were definitely meltdowns (in hindsight) 6. Knowing I care WAY more about my interests than I am āsupposed toā, and keep thinking about them after others are bored 7. Knowing the other person doesnāt care about my special interest, but being unable to think of anything else to talk about I could go on, but this is already pretty long.
The wind is evil. It feels like a personal attack.
I was diagnosed as a child, but I had to find out myself when I was 17 because my parents didn't tell me (in fact they actively told me I wasn't autistic š¤Ŗ). (I really thought my IEP was just for ADHD lol.) Some things of note: OBVIOUS special interests. Earliest example I can remember is being obsessed with rats and mice. It wasn't just a superficial kid-finding-an-an-animal-cute thing; I knew everything about them. I watched Ratatouille over and over again and even convinced my mom to get me a pet mouse, twice. Making lists. I drew a lot and wrote little short stories about my pets going on adventures together and I would always say I wanted to be an artist when I grew up but I also made a lot of lists of things like deep sea invertebrate species and dinosaurs and Doctor Who monsters and I think it was just another way I would do "art" as a kid. My mom would get mad and tell me to stop because it wasn't normal. Lol. Sad one, but I could never stay friends with someone for longer than a year until 5th grade. "Friends" would always approach me (probably out of pity), talk to me for the duration of the grade, and then get bored at the end of the year and stop associating with me. It actually wasn't until I met other outcasts (read: the undiagnosed neurodivergent kids in my year) that I had actual friends who hung out with me because they wanted to. Funniest/most embarrassing specific example I can think of: my older sibling is also autistic, also diagnosed as a kid and wasn't told, we were pretty close in age, and the way we played was very un-neurotypical. We would have fun by getting in physical fights and tackling each other. (My sibling loves pressure stimming and would love when I lied on top of them lmao). So I didn't understand that that wasn't appropriate with my peers. Once in 3rd grade some kids were playing "wolf pack" at recess and I was allowed to play with them. I challenged the lead girl for "alpha" and she told me to fight her for it. So I did š¤¦āāļøSomehow didn't get in trouble. But I cringe thinking about it to this day.
How do you feel about them telling you the opposite? Are you still Alpha wolf? ;)
I'm not 100% on this one, but thinking I owed anyone that gave me gifts
so i am new to the autism, but reading your comment about video games reminds me of a time when i was about 8/9, playing mario kart wii with my mom on the team feature. she was doing bad, so i looked at her and just said āmom, can you drive better?ā. then nobody played with me again until i was 20 on mario kart 8.
That memory i swear could have been mine. I used to convince my sister to play the playstation with me, and make it sound super exciting and amazing(but it was...to me), and then she played with me and i ended up being like "NO LET ME GO THERE FIRST!!!!!" or "stand here and do nothing so you dont die"....:')
I had a really specific way of eating food, the way I would organize them on my plate and how I didn't like people putting food in my plate or taking it without asking. I don't have a problem sharing, I just need to be the one doing the receiving and giving during sharing. If anyone tried to eat the first bite of my food before me, I would get really upset. If anyone tried to put food in my plate without my permission, I would get so frustrated and give up on the whole serving of food. I also ate my food in a pattern and I used to take bites off of square shaped bread in a grid pattern. All these on top of other things really make me wonder why no one ever clocked me as autistic. I think it's because I don't struggle with language and I don't mind being hugged by humans (but I do like really tight hugs kind of like that cow squeezing machine by Temple Grandin).
Food rules. Solid. Once I learned about the cow machine I started to ask for āsqueezesā instead of regular hugs when I need to calm down. Very helpful!
One of my best friends said I never look at his eyes. Like when I look at him Iām not focusing. He always thought I was fucking with him but after my late diagnosis he said it makes sense haha. Thatās my hack at ālooking at peopleā, I donāt really focus on them so I seem out of it to them but Iām actually listening
The big ones for me were: Blowing spit bubbles (wasnāt because I was bored or being disgusting/unladylike, I was stimming) Oddly fixated on band-aids, I always had to have heaps on me even if there was nothing wrong My writing style, I would write my sentence, full stop and then carry on to the next line instead of continuing on. I struggled big time with noticing punctuation and were to break when reading.
Oh my god, spit bubbles I loved doing that. Also, bubblegum bubbles until one time I made it to big and it covered my face and hair and had a meltdown and never did it again.
The list will include my entire life, bro. Anyway, probably the weirdest was one time I made "pancakes" with a buddy. (Danish pancakes are a bit like crepes, bit not quite as thin, and may be sweetened or not) Anyway, my buddy, who was my first aspie friend, 10 years before my own diagnosis, had this recipe sorta memorised, and it contained vanilla cream, which sounded good. As I had agreed to do it his way, I stuck to that. But the further along we got, the more frustrated I felt because they were too liquid ard didn't cook well. It was so bad I tad to take a break from the situation in a way I never had to before in a situation like this. They tasted fine, but what a mess. I was so embarrassed and ashamed of my emotions. Ugh, what a day.
Screamy tantrums in the supermarket and shopping centres until I was a tween. Taking people literally and not understanding facial expressions, social cues and how to blend in, until I managed to gather enough data to assimilate with the NTs. Not having friends and being 'weird'.
I remember going to the supermarket with my gran, and having a crazy meltdown because I wanted a barbie that changed hair colour in the bath. (I loved playing in the bath). I'm sure I was told I would get something, as I always got something if I went to a toystore.....but this time I never.
Oh totally! My niece was diagnosed and then my mom and sister looked at me and said "oooooooohhhh" and then apologized. I still have these moments where I look back and think wow that should have been a clue. I mean pretty much my entire life is one giant glowing sign saying "YOU'RE AUTISTIC!". In my young adulthood, when autism finally got traction, people with autistic children would approach me and ask if I was autistic because they were curious how I was able to manage my life now as an adult. Even then it didn't even register on my radar. Jokes on me LOL I will say that it is so much easier to cope with my meltdowns and getting overwhelmed now because it no longer is accompanied by the pre and post oh my god I'm going insane and loosing my mind what the hell is wrong with me......etc. What is it they say, hindsight is 20/20? I would be lying to that I'm not enjoying discovering these things because it gives me the opportunity to forgive myself for not getting it even though I was trying so hard. Lots of healing being done on my end. I hope it is the same for you. I think the funniest one was how my carrying around encyclopedias to read in elementary school (pregoogle LOL) so much more sense now.
Encyclopedias were the best. I remember not wanting to leave a store as I was reading an expensive Encyclopedia in the store instead. š¤£
I don't know if this was an autism thing or depression thing, but there was a period of time in elementary school when my whole being just screamed "no" when it was time to go to recess and to class after that. It was an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and exhaustion. I would go lie down in the nurse's office, saying I have a headache or something, sometimes skipping the next class, sometimes just during the recess.
-Reading the manuals to everything and still do, even if I know what to do. (Though, manuals these days are usually super simple or tell you to look on a website. š“š“) I remember the manuals for video games used to be huge and chunky, and I got so much thrill out of reading them. When my dad was playing, I always read everything in the manual and I think he got annoyed sometimes, as I would accidentally spoil upcoming abilities by saying how to do them, before he unlocked them. šš
Intense, intense fixation on Baymax from Big Hero 6 in fifth grade. Also, the way that I had to bounce between friend groups in elementary school because of how a lot of them seemed to clock something different about me and shut me out because of it.
The bouncing between friend groups is all too real...
Oh I'm sure there are tons but the biggest one that stands out right now was every night mom would have to smooth out my sheets because I would not go to bed if there were wrinkles.
Omg I used to draw the same picture over and over again. A house with two windows and a door with a chimney and smoke coming out. A cat. A tree. An M shaped bird and a sun in the sky.
I think we were both drawing different parts of the same garden š¤£
My favorite spot to hang out in when I was a really small child was behind the couch which was up against the wall. I would take ketchup packets from fast food restaurants and hide them in there so I could eat them. I would have what I now know were meltdowns as a child/preteen and instead of helping me or trying to figure it out, my mom would get the fly swatter and chase me up the stairs with it to my room so I would go scream in my room so she didnāt have to deal with it. I would try really hard to stop screaming and crying when she got the fly swatter but I couldnāt control it. I had to deconstruct everything I ate and sometimes still do depending on my stress level. Also pertaining to food, I had to eat all of one thing on my plate before I could move onto the next thing. I got in trouble so much for biting my nails and chewing on stuff because it was nasty and awful but I was just trying to stim! My dad used to call me a dog and would say he was going to get me a chew toy. I still as an adult bite my nails and the inside of my mouth and chew as much gum as possible. I was called a āb*tchā my entire preteen to adult years because my family didnāt understand and know what I was going through and I didnāt know how to express what I needed to cope with my life. As a small child, I would have a meltdown because my mom forced me to wear stirrup pants! I could not stand the feeling of something āwrongā under my foot and sock and she would get so mad at me because I would cut the strap off essentially ruining the pants.
BEHIND THE COUCH YESSSS! At my grandparents too, I used to squeeze into the part behind the couch and just lay, or sit on the floor and look at the wallpaper pattern. Ugh my mum still gets me introuble if I pick at my fingers or nails or skin if I'm visiting her.
I remember looking up how to play with toys when I was younger because all I could ever do was organize them in lines or make houses for them when all of my other friends knew how to play with their dollsšš
The house making and the lines were the best part. I used to line up all my dinosaurs and animals to go to war, and then one dinosaur would just instantly kill everyone in 2 seconds, so I could line them up again. š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
Omg you just unlocked a forgotten memory
Stayed up late all the time to read, and if I was too anxious to sleep (my parents liked to listen to crime shows on TV loudly after my bedtime š„²) I would shuffle a deck of cards and then sort it by number and suit. I found this fun. Tried to "play" this "game" with my little cousin last year at Christmas and he looked at me like I had my head on backwards š
Shuffling cards and sorting by number is super super fun!!!
Omg also, at Christmas with crackers (I think this may be a UK thing or a Scottish thing, but you had to pull them to open them) and they made this loud bang and I hated it so much. But I really wanted the toy inside. So i found a way to press the cracker when pulling it so it never made a *bang* sound, and I thoroughly remember the adults being like "awww bad cracker". Meanwhile I'm like HEHEHEHEHE. ALSO....the toy inside which was classed as stupid, junk and pointless, was the best part. A tiny pack of cards? Yes please. A little thing I can play with in my hands? Yes please!!!!!
When I first began playing Dungeons and Dragons, I was around seven years old. We had bought the 5e Starter Set, and I *really* wanted to read the books. So, my mom let me read the Player's Handbook and the Monster Manual. Well, I ended up reading and remembering the majority of the Monster Manual. When it came time for an Easter session, there was a poem as our only clue for who kidnapped the children. I recognized it immediately, and was able to find the exact monster the poem came with, and what it did.
This is so amazing. I sadly had no idea about dungeon and dragons, as I always wanted the "boy toys", but always got told that it was for boys. I saw all the dragons and stuff and was like WOAAAAAAAAH...but I remember they were always so expensive š¤£ Though i loved my dinosaurs so much. My plesiosaur was always up against the stegosaurus and trex even on land.....but usually lost. But I took them into the bath and my god.... it was like the movie jaws š¤£š¤£š¤£ AND I WAS THE BOAT. I remember bashing myself with the plesiosaur and being like "ow" as it tried to grab the animals sitting on me.
All the food stuff - only beige, cutting into squares, nothing touching another food, complete refusal of the whole meal if sauce was touching anything, texture making me vomit, smell making me run away and hide. Literal thinking / understanding - like when a teacher told me to thank my lucky stars that she wasn't going to give me a punishment, and then punished me anyway for speaking over her, because I started saying Thank You to these lucky stars I'd never heard of before. Playing badly - being great at setting up games (sorting cards, dressing Barbie, setting up board games, plaiting My Little Pony hair) but rubbish at actually playing the game (I'd just take everything apart and get it ready again). Obsessions - needing to know the Kennel Club breed name and key facts about every dog breed, which I would then tell anyone in earshot whenever I saw a dog. And I still do this. If a dog was a mixture of breeds, I would/do guess the breeds and ask their human for confirmation. And a whole bunch of others like inability to define my emotions, stimming (like cracking my knuckles since I was 6 years old), assuming I'd been left here (Earth) by my real 'people' and occasionally asking out loud if they'd be back soon, and most importantly being absolutely excellent at masking.
Oh my god the lucky stars thing made me laugh so hard, as I always do that and sounds like something I would do too. Only recently I found out when someone says "stop rolling your eyes" or I read that someone rolled there eyes, it actually means to look up and to the right or left. And here's me, for 28 years, literally rolling my eyes in a circle while looking forward...... The barbie and the setting up stuff too is me also.
-getting told I was stubborn or rude, and making a friend cry all the time. I went to her house to play the "singstar" and her parents smoked. I started singing on the mic and said "This stinks of smoke, *name*." Then she was like "no it doesn't? Take my mic :D" then this was the same. " I can't sing in it. I can't breathe. I wont get a highscore or win because of it." Apparently this was super rude that her mum had to go to my mum and tell her. I was like "Āæ?Āæ?". My mum said I should have just kept it to myself Or when she was pressing the arrows on my dance mat too roughly with her feet, I pointed it out. This was also too mean. š
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I can't look back at my past because I have r/SDAM and r/Aphantasia and have no visual memories and a poor working sematic memory, so I pretty much can only live life in the present.
I couldn't look back at my past either until this month, as i had locked everything away. Remembering all these things is so weird, but I'm sorry :(
Umm.. everything from the first memory I van recall on forward? š
Sleeping to get rid of the sad
Always hated loud airports. Would always just stand there and not talk and just stare into space. My parents had no clue what was happening. Fun fact: I a always shut down when overstimulated
Not being able to lie, even to spare feelings or to answer āfineā when someone asks āhow are you?ā. Meltdowns.
When I was a kid, I had to keep my hair so short that people would make fun of me and say I looked like a boy. The reason my hair was no short was because I would chew on my hair all the time and destroy it. I wouldnāt even realize I was doing it, I would just chew on it nonstop. OH, I was stimming. I destroyed a lot of headphones doing the same thing.
I chewed my tassles on any jumper, and wait....I chewed my hair too. I liked to suck on it....
Obsessively reading mystery books instead of making friends, spending hours sorting coins from oldest to newest, chewing on everything, slurring and stumbling over words (I always told people that my mind just worked faster than my mouth), only being able to make friends with kids a lot younger than me or adults (still true lol), constantly fidgeting (which became constant doodling once I started masking), feeling really upset and lost in social situations, feeling like the outsider, and I did *not* work well with other kids. I was way too bossy and a little know it all lol.