Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello all,been doing a fair bit of talking to my dear wife just lately and keep coming up with lots of strange things that don't add up.
I can remember times that were not nice but very little happiness, I realise most people forget things about childhood especially when my age 54.
I had issues and when I got into my late teens I theorised I had dyslexic traits,it answered many questions but not all,it helped me go forward in life.fast forward 54 years and I find out about autism,it was a revelation in my life,it was my life.
I thought my dyslexia idea must be wrong but recently found that there can be a connection.
After talking about My recollections my wife says "are you sure as that doesn't make sense?" Things I never gave much credence too.
I was born in 1962 and things were different then.
For instance I do remember always being at home with mum or waiting for a bus to go shopping,nothing strange about that, but I had a younger sister and a brother who was only eighteen months older! So where were they? Why was I at home so often?
I was kept back at infant school and the kids I knew all left to go to big school, I was told it was because my birthday was early September. I was the oldest child from then on I also had a school full of strange new faces. I don't remember much about infant school,mostly teachers shouting at me,making me cry for not doing my work,being lazy or not concentrating,
I do remember some happy times but so few.being allowed to go collect our milk from the staff room with a sack truck.being in the big shed helping the caretaker clean out cages for hamsters rabbits etc,he was deaf and dumb but we got on ok.
I remember being in one class sat on the floor drawing around shapes,tins boxes but nothing free hand,the other kids were sat working with the teacher but I was not involved?
I also remember bits of a family meeting that ended with my whole family in tears,we stormed out and I was then told how it was all my fault? I wasn't upset until my siblings started saying I didn't care as I wasn't upset.
There are so many things that don't add up but I have a big question and hope I can word it so as not to upset anyone here.
Say for instance if I had been non verbal? Or just unable to function normally? Maybe in a world of my own? Back then labelled as retarded. There are a lot worse words which I don't want to put on here but back then there weren't any options.
So are there any adults here that basically knew nothing of the issues they had when young? It's as if I only woke up later in school.
Could I have been so poor functioning and not known it?
A big for instance was when I went to big school, All the kids were getting excited and I asked"why are you all excited and packing everything away?" The reply was "it's Friday!" I asked what that was about? The response was "are you thick or what?we get the weekend off". I asked why was that,was it holiday time?. I was laughed at and ridiculed by the kids.
I had no recollection of weekends! I had no concept of time. Life was one big blur of hurt and no understanding.
I hope I haven't put something that causes hurt but I have tried to explain.
many thanks.
I remember my childhood so vividly. I remember being what I would call reasonably 'normal' up until around age 6, when something happened at school that I still hark back to as the time when my 'differences' became more apparent, and when I started to both fall behind the others and to isolate more. By 10, the template was pretty much set on the way I've been ever since.
I was a happy child, and I have happy memories. It was the time before innocence gave way to experience and understanding, and reflection. We were poor - but we had some magical Christmases and holidays. I was a little older than the other kids in the street, so I became a sort of 'leader'. I loved Batman, and had a Batman outfit one Christmas. So I was the street's Batman. I had fantasies of rescuing people. Fantasy was a big part of my life, actually. Even then, I used to spend a lot of time alone in imaginative play. It felt safe and gave me a lot of pleasure - drawing comic strips with matchstick men, making up 'plays' with my soft toys, etc. I also - I remember this very clearly - began to masturbate at a very young age. Certainly before I started school.
I was okay at school to begin with. I was way ahead of everyone else in my first year in reading and spelling - though my handwritiing was, as still is, atrocious. Then, that thing happened. Each day we had 'number practice'. The teacher would give us a sheet of paper with the numeral of the day at the top, and we had to fill the sheet in with that numeral and hand it in. I did them all automatically, because I could already count up to 100 and knew what all the numbers looked like. That particular day, though - after handing my sheet in - I was called out to the front and told I'd done it wrong. The teacher - I can still remember what she looked like and what she was wearing - gave me a piece of chalk and told me to write the number - 3 - on the board. By the end of what was probably just a few minutes, but felt like hours, the board was full of the numeral 3 - and each one, she told me, was wrong. 'It doesn't go like that!' was the refrain, each time I drew a 3... over and over and over. In the end, I was drawing back-to-front 3s, 3s on their sides, different numbers entirely. The class was in hysterics. I remember hearing the words 'idiot', 'stupid', etc. being thrown at me - from the teacher as well as my peers. My world was suddenly turned upside-down. I was doing something that I knew to be right - but I was being told by an authority figure, and all of my classmates, that it was wrong. Turns out that the only thing I was doing 'wrong' was not giving the 3 a flat top... as she wanted it, and as she'd drawn it on my sheet.
That day, I maintain, was the start of things going wrong. The episode has hung heavily over my life. To this day, even if I know I'm right about something, I don't say anything for fear of being told it's wrong. If I get pulled up by somebody because of a mistake, it troubles me for days. If I find a way of doing something that works for me, but someone questions it - I go to pieces. I don't know if I have some kind of learning problem or if it's simply the trauma of that time that makes learning problematic for me (so it could be PTSD-related). Possibly a combination - and autistic people certainly experience and respond to trauma in a way that NTs probably don't. I know, in spite of being bright, I failed my 11+. I know that I was bottom of the year at my first secondary school - all the way through. At my second - a comprehensive - I was put in the 'grammar' stream for some lessons (for some reason!), where I was like the village idiot. I left school early, with no qualifications, and somehow thought that my education was over and that I knew everything I needed to know. It took me a few years to realise the truth. Then I caught up a bit and went to uni at 28. I got a good degree. I'd had my IQ Mensa-tested, and belonged to Mensa. I knew I had something after all.
But many of my problems, I still feel, started that day in the school room. Or, at least, that's where my 'differences' first became apparent to me - even if it was just a small lapse of concentration, or simply taking for granted something I already knew. Learning has always been a problem for me. I struggle with things like language-learning. I've played the piano for 40 years, but still can't play a piece without making a mistake, and still can't really understand relations between notes, chords, etc. I can only play pieces I've learned note by note. I can't improvise. At school, I was called a 'lazy learner' - but I need a motivation and interest in order to learn something. I also, though, have attention-deficit problems. The result is that, though I sound erudite - and people tell me I'm high-minded - I have a head that is basically a scrap-book. I know a little about a lot, and a lot about very little. I have no confidence in my abilities. I go to pieces in arguments and discussions... then retire away to lick my wounds. It's why I write, I suppose - my preferred means of communication. Because I can think first. I can marshal together the things that I need to back up what I say. And I can say it without interruption, in full confidence. Also... no one has to see my face as I do it!