Published on 12, July, 2020
People on the spectrum, often those diagnosed in adulthood, have said they feel as if they don't belong on this planet. I love planet Earth and her animals but, if only The Doctor really were to exist, I'd gladly take the chance to travel to, and live on, a different planet where I would be accepted.
Part of me wants to write fanfiction about this but it may upset me because there's no way this fantasy could come true.
I can definitely identify with this & have always felt that I didn't really belong, like some sort of 'Changeling'.
I can fit in reasonably well with most other people, but only by initially analysing their behaviour & then consciously choosing the best way to mould myself to gain their approval.
There was a very old 1970s TV series called 'The Martian Chronicles' (from the book) where in one episode the last Martian child survives by literally changing shape to hide amongst humans, but then gets caught when different groups it lived with all appear at once & it keeps instinctively switching forms. When I watched that in my late teens, it nearly made me cry, as it perfectly described how I felt.
As I've got older, I still pretty much do the same thing, but now I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never truly fit in anywhere. Even my own parents/family have never really understood & for the same reason that it is usually fairly easy to blend in.
People generally only see what they want to see, so if you can identify that & show them a reasonable approximation, they will just assume the rest. The only problem is that once you realise that truth, it makes you feel even more like an alien.
At least my cat accepts me unconditionally though!
The Wikipedia page for 'Changeling' actually contains a section about the possibility that the legends may derive in part from children with neurological differences - for example, folk tales about mischievous elvish folk who can be distracted by giving them something to count are very common.
Thankfully, diagnosis is now not quite as barbaric as it used to be...
[to identify a changeling] ...it is supposedly necessary to mistreat the child by placing it in a hot oven, by holding it in a shovel over a hot fire, or by bathing it in a solution of foxglove.
Jeepers!!! What reactions were considered 'normal' or not to such treatment?
It sounds eerily like the 'test' for witches where they drowned women and judged them witch or not depending upon whether their corpse floated or not!