Hello. Are there any people here who were born in the 70s and 80s, always different, now diagnosed with high-functioning autism? Like me?

I'm almost 50 years old, and I've always felt I was different. Even in preschool, at the age of three, I felt it clearly. But it wasn't a problem for me. I functioned very well. I asked my mother why the children at preschool were different from me. She didn't understand my questions. So I decided she was different too. As if it were natural that most people are different from me, although I don't know why. But I never wanted to be like those others, even at three or four years old. In a sense, I felt they were a separate species, even though they looked the same. To simplify a bit – like a dog and a cat. Both species, in a simplified description, have the same physical characteristics: fur, four legs, a tail, ears... But they're different species. And that's normal. That's how I felt in preschool. After that, it was different.

Parents
  • i’m 53 and i just got diagnosed last week. when i was doing my paperwork i realised just how awful school was for me. 

    born in 1973, i can clearly remember (i can remember everything that’s ever happened to me) feeling left out and not wanting to play with other children when i was at nursery school age 3. i started school at 3 and a half - i could already read when i got there!

    i went to a private prep school with only 130 children. i was moved up a year when i was 7 so had to do ‘Upper 6th’ which was only four of us. moving up to secondary school was like being thrown into an industrial mincer. i was bullied and excluded and it was hell. pure hell. even my ‘best friend’ bullied me in front of other people for some of my mannerisms. i suppressed all of it, scraped 7 average GCSEs and disappointed my family forever by not passing my 11 Plus and going to my local comp. they expected great things from me but as i got older and was expected to learn independently, i just couldn’t do it. crashed out of my A Levels. the only one of five kids who never went into higher education, never went to uni, never made anything of myself. when i was 14 i started acting out and was just punished over and over until i left home at 17.

    i’ve had jobs but never a career. i can’t keep my mouth shut if i can see someone not doing something right, and that’s not sustainable in an office environment. i worked from 17 to 39, when i had a spectacular breakdown and spent 5 weeks inpatient psych. i won a diagnosis of BPD and was put on a high dosage of antipsychotics. that was 15 years ago - i’m still on them now.

    my diagnosis has set me free. i’ve been able to tell my family that i’m not bad, or defective. i didn’t just opt out of life - i did my best until i couldn’t do it anymore.

  • oh my goodness, that last sentence, 'i did my best until I couldn't do it anymore' broke my heart for the truth of it.  With autism all we ever do is try and do our best when we don't even know what 'best' is because we look at everyone else to determine that for us and with 7 billion people on this planet that makes for huge variables. My word for today came to me as forgiveness.  To give myself grace in advance of all the potential *** ups I will make and the bone exhausting effort of trying to get it right.   

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  • oh my goodness, that last sentence, 'i did my best until I couldn't do it anymore' broke my heart for the truth of it.  With autism all we ever do is try and do our best when we don't even know what 'best' is because we look at everyone else to determine that for us and with 7 billion people on this planet that makes for huge variables. My word for today came to me as forgiveness.  To give myself grace in advance of all the potential *** ups I will make and the bone exhausting effort of trying to get it right.   

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