Something I wrote nearly 20 years before the diagnosis

'Do any of you have difficulty in making small talk? Initiating conversations
with other people and developing relationships from conversations. Do you
have difficulty with the processes involved and find it difficult to know
which is the right way to interact with others.As if you are questioning
your emotional responses and are not sure whether your emotional responses
are adequate/relevant to the situation in hand.As if you find it difficult
to know how to react to a given situation or to other people.
. I find it difficult to initiate conversations and have always found it
difficult to form relationships even platonic ones. Sometimes i find it
difficult to know how to respond to a given situation -it is though i have
difficulty reading the signals and it is not always easy to give an
appropriate emotional response. I often feel that i am different from other
people that somehow i am lacking in some way that i find it difficult to
identify with them- it is as if i am a stranger looking in on an environment
that he is not used to and does not know how to respond to. However i would
not say that my emotions are flattened -It is just that i find the whole
emotional process a little hard to fathom a fair amount of the time. A lot
of the time i think i am emotionally disabled and have been for more years
than i can remember.'

30 Jan 2000