I’m in my mid-fifties and just coming to grips with me being neurodivergent. I spent most of my early days thinking there was something seriously wrong with me, which I touched on in past posts. In the last one, I talked about how my mother’s very old-fashioned Taiwanese expectations of gender really messed me up. Add to that the fact that I was a weirdo to begin with, and my childhood was miserable.
I remember when I was six or seven, I was on the playground at school during recess. I looked around me and realized that I felt like an alien amongst the humans. Everyone else seemed like they knew what they were supposed to do whereas I was floundering at everything. My parents had no interest in American culture, which meant I was clueless about it as well.
I was also whip smart, which was not a good thing when I was trying to fit in.
I may have been book smart, but I was very people ignorant. I did not know what to say to the other kids, and I was miserable all the time. I had two teachers, one in the fifth grade and one in the sixth, who were really kind to me. I didn’t like the attention at the time, but in retrospect, they were examples of good men.
I had no friends as a kid. I didn’t know how to talk to American kids, and they did not know what to do with me. I got teased for being Asian, and when I brought food to school, I got made fun of for that as well. I was one of maybe three Asian kids in my grade, and that did nothing to help my low self-esteem.
I was good at school, and I was beaten down emotionally by the time I was in school, so most teachers just ignored me. Except the two I mentioned above. I was also bored because I learned very quickly, and back in those days, no one paid much attention to the smart kids.
I did have a reading class in the first grade that was just me and another kid–a boy who was also very smart. We read books that were way above our grade level, and that was my one refuge during the day. I was a voracious reader and tackled War and Peace in the sixth grade because it was the biggest book I knew of. I made it halfway through before realizing I had no clue what was going on because everyone had so many nicknames, so I gave up.
I also read The Scarlet Letter around that time, and even though I did not know much about sex and gender, I was appalled that Hester Prynne took the brunt of the blame. That never made sense to me, and it makes even less sense to me now.
I wasted so much time as a child and teen filing off all my rough edges, watching the others around me, and trying desperately to fit in. I didn’t realize that it was a fool’s errand because no matter how blunted I made myself, it was not going to matter in the long run. I could not twist myself into a tight enough pretzel to fool the normies.
There was always something just off about me. I did not think like most people, and when I was younger, I did not know what to do about it. Hell, I didn’t even really know that I was such a weirdo. I mean, I knew I was different than other peopleand my brain didn’t work the way theirs did, but I thought it was because my brain was broken.
The world and my family made me believe that there was something inherently wrong with me. I could not allow to show even a tenth of who I really was lest I–what? I wasn’t really sure about that, but I knew that the result would be catastrophic. The real me, you see, was simply unacceptable. I didn’t even question this as a truth when I was a kid. As young as seven,I knew I was nothing, and I should not be alive.
When I was in my twenties, there were a series of realizations I made that separated me even furethr from mainstream society. I did not want childrren, and that was apparently the worst thing I as an AFAB could say out loud in the nineties/aughts.
That was a big lesson in not saying my anti-societal opinions out loud if I did not have the wherewithal to deal with it. Which I usually don’t.
Another experience that should have tipped me off to being a weirdo was a time K and I went dancing. This was during the time when you could smoke inside, so we were smoking on the dance floor as we were dancing.
This guy came up to us, smiled, and said to me, “You know, smoking is bad for you.”
This was way before negging was a thing, but that was certainly what he was doing. Maybe not specifically to make me feel bad about myself, but I could tell by the impish smile on his face that he thought he was being charming.
I did not find it charming in the least as I could not understand why he would say something that sounded like scolding when it was clear he was trying to hit on me. I have read from people who were neurodivergent that this kind of negging sailed right over their head and just made them feel embarrassed for the man negging them.
It would have really helped if I weren’t so trained to cater to other people’s emotions. I dismissed the idea that I might be autistic because I was really good at social situations and reading other people’s feelings. It wasn’t until an autistic friend told me to take an online test and answer how I would without masking that things clicked into place in my brain.
I did not know how to unmask completely, but I knew that much of my social skills were learned out of necessity. If I were left to my own devices, I would just skulk in corners at parties and not talk to anyone. Instead, I knew how to ask questions that focused on the other person, and I have been told by many people that they just felt so comfortable around me.
That’s my first impression. Unfortunately, I get less palatable the more you know me because I can only keep up the act for so long. It’s fucking tiring is what I’m trying to say.
More tomorrow. That’s all for now.