I knew people found me uncanny and strange – then came the diagnosis that explained it all


The writer Joanne Limburg always knew other people found her somehow unsettling – so much so, she felt she identified with Stephen King’s Carrie. But it was only in her 30s, while reading about autism, that she understood why

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/16/i-knew-people-found-me-uncanny-and-strange-then-came-the-diagnosis-that-explained-it-all


Parents
  • Thanks for this.  I always wished I had Carrie's powers. Or could just click my fingers and make people disappear. And I have often had to say "Excuse me but I am HERE you know " when people talk about me as if I am not present. Great article though.  I love it when books confirm your sense of self as if they were written just for you.

Reply
  • Thanks for this.  I always wished I had Carrie's powers. Or could just click my fingers and make people disappear. And I have often had to say "Excuse me but I am HERE you know " when people talk about me as if I am not present. Great article though.  I love it when books confirm your sense of self as if they were written just for you.

Children
  • I'll just join here to say that in the 80s and 90s I was a fan of Steven King's books; something about the way he tells the story makes him one of the few authors of fiction whose name I remember and whose books I used to buy sometimes on the strength of his name alone. I remember after 20 odd years Stan the Man Urwin and Beverly Rogan (nee Marsh - or the other way round) from IT, and the description of flipping to the other side - which seemed somehow intuitive and almost real - in Insomnia (& the little bald doctors).


  • Thanks for this.

    During the early to middle-late nineties I had a friend who had every book by and interview with Stephen King, who insisted, if I wanted, that I should read his collection of King's works ~ which I did during my insomnia bouts, being that we lived in the same accommodation.

    I really enjoyed reading the article due to the writing style, subject matter and it increasing autism awareness, and I kept getting strong aspirations that I should post it here.


    I always wished I had Carrie's powers.

    Although I identified strongly with the way Carrie was treated, my fear was that along with the increased strength, high empathic sensitivity (which drat of drats turns off when I talk) that I might also have her powers ~ as I used to hear voices about not only killing my bullies but specifically how to do so as well!!! :-(

    So so so not good for me as a devout pacifist, and although I did explosively revisit upon a few of my bullies their treatment of me ~ I really did not want to at all and it also invariably made me vomit and tremble convulsively and have nerve quakes for some time afterwards. I did inquire about having the bullying stopped, on numerous occasions, but I was told to talk to men about it and was advised and shown how to become a more violent bully, with advice like stabbing people with pencils and other such nasties included, so that was a totalitarian lost cause. :-(

    I did though get the violent re-visitations completely reigned in by getting proficient in a martial art at the beginning of my twenties ~ which I had a natural talent for, and the demonic (Id oriented) voices where silenced by way of transcendental meditation by my mid twenties. :-)


    Or could just click my fingers and make people disappear.

    I used to long for something similar in the sense of being transported into a future time-frame of no tribal elitisms.  


    And I have often had to say "Excuse me but I am HERE you know " when people talk about me as if I am not present.

    I just got used to established and experimental bullies at high-school from years one to five for four and half years not excusing me ~ and making me long passionately to be elsewhere or else desperately non existent. I had my first major breakdown in my second year, getting 'diagnosed' (my first extracurricular qualification!) as being "Schizoeffective and/or Psychopathic", and then I had my second major breakdown during the middle of the fifth year ~ which is when the school actually stopped the bullying! A bit late really in many respects but hey ho!


    Great article though.

    Very much so, as I liked Linburg's writing style, and an old author friend of mine allowed me to read through his Stephen King collection of books and magazine interviews, so reading the article was very dejavu-esque in its own right and also very pleasantly reminiscent of that time around the mid nineties.


    I love it when books confirm your sense of self as if they were written just for you.

    Another one that I identified with much more was the 'Green Mile' ~ although I barely remember reading the series of books but adored the film adaptation, with Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan in the key roles.

    Due to having a near death experience when I was three I also got into Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga books (with the lead female character's transformation into a vampire being remarkably similar to my experience of coming back from the light) which led me onto reading The Host, which was incredibly confirmatory to my sense of self as a human 'being' rather than as a 'human'.

    I very much have that sense of having ended up on the 'Wrong Planet' or at least in the wrong time-frame or dimension of which. Terry Pratchett's and Stephen Baxter's book THE LONG EARTH really resonated with my inter-plainal experience of things, as during the seizures I have and during those dreams that are realer than real I have found myself on different versions of this planet or others. Products of imagination most likely but holographic dimensions co-existing as interwoven plains are a known fact at least in quantum topography.