Hello from Oxfordshire

Hi everyone,

Interests

I would  like to make friends here. Ideally I'd love people I can exchange letters with, Discord messages or even better meet in person occasionally!

I like medieval history, Japanese folklore and history, smithing, computers, math and other things too.

Background

I'm 30+ and have survived life so far. I've gone through life thinking I was just weird, mostly because I never felt in pace with people and always tried really really really hard to adapt, to be accepted, to make friends... And failed, miserably so, most of the time. There was something wrong with me, but maybe I was just an unlikeable character and that's all. 

I had been tested as a gifted child but that had been an information I had casually been told and which I had tossed away until a few years ago a psychologist told me this was actually something, it didn't just go away or get better. It stuck. So I researched it and found many items which corresponded to the way I experienced things, the way I felt. And so I incorporated this new data into my life and moved on, I was gifted, which tbh is no gift. But there were many things unaccounted for. So the questioning began. Why did I feel more comfortable around neuroatypicals than around neurotypicals? Why was I never able to know when someone was being sarcastic or not? Why did I keep missing on all the subtexts? Why couldn't I understand what people meant when they didn't say it straight? Why was I so passionate and focused on special interests which just seemed weird to others and hence could never share? Why did I spend my time monitoring every move, tone, word from others to try to get things right and always failed to do so? Why did people never say what they thought? Why were social interactions always so complicated? Why did I spend my time doing guesswork trying to discern people's meanings and intentions to miserably fail when others managed to easily? Why couldn't I understand when it was my turn to talk or not in a group conversation? Why did certain textures send shivers trough my spine?

I wasn't normal. Not the way normality seemed to be defined by everyone. So after years trying to be accepted as myself and failing, during my teenage years I decided to try to assimilate into the neurotypical culture. I studied them, the way the moved, spoke, what they said. I became an anthropologist trying to list and make sense of the weird customs of the people who surrounded me. It wasno easy task and took me about ten years, but I finally mastered the skill. I became more capable of cameleoning my way through the world. I still don't pick up on irony, I still miss a huge part of social cues and very seldom catch the subtexts, but I've learnt to conceal it much better now. I look the part. But it's tiring. I just want to meet people with whom I don't have to act me but can actually be me.

Maybe I am not in the AS, maybe I am just gifted, or maybe I am both, or none. Who knows. I'll apply for a diagnosis but these things take ages.

Have a great day.