Kindergarten. As a minority in a majority white school, my (also white) teacher couldn't pronounce my ethnic name how my family members did. Heard it pronounced it the "white" way for the first time and it sounded all wrong. I remember correcting my teacher a few times and then just gave up. Also was embarrassed about my ethnic snacks haha.
Embarrassment/isolation for being different was one of the first emotional memories of grade school. Though I'm sure thats not an unusual experience for young kids.
A long time ago, in many many different ways. But so does everyone else, because we're all unique, aren't we?
But what I realized only just now: my special power is teaching. And I'm not a teacher. I was in highly paid B2B service oriented jobs all my life, but only now, in my mid-30s do I realize I'd probably want to be a teacher. Not sure what to do at this point.
It was so early that I honestly don't even know. Probably somewhere at 4-5 years old? And I remember telling a school psychologist at 9 or 10 that "I'm just weird I suppose" - I always got teased or even bullied because I just didn't fit in anywhere and never had. I sometimes feel like I still don't, but I've never had more friends than I do now, so I'm fine with being different nowadays. I am who I am and I don't really care anymore if people don't like me - life's too short to worry about getting people to like you, especially those that tend to passively shame you for being different. Besides, I don't want people to like me for whatever facade or mask I used to wear. I want them to like me for me, so I no longer pretend to be someone I'm not because that's a waste of everyone's time
I remember when starting kindergarten, it was unusual to already know how to read, to count to above 100, and other things like that. Being the smart kid, the one who usually got a perfect score on tests and was always reading, became a big part of my identity for a long while. (Along with "the kid who builds stuff out of Legos.")
But there were other smart kids and I wasn't particularly talented at anything non-academic. I was shy, quite bad at sports (picked nearly last for most teams), and it's not like I was popular. And of course there were older kids who were above us, and younger kids who were below. So it felt less like an advantage and more like a specialty, something parents and teachers were pleased by. This was my lot in life. I was okay with it and didn't question it. An adult might say I had a bright future, but I didn't really know what that meant.
I've always known I'm different on some level but it honestly wasn't until college that it really started to sink in. My entire life I've known that I've had some kind of neurodivergence, but it's been difficult to put my finger on it. Earlier in my life it that meant that I spent a lot of time with people who were weirder. My friends were all rejected by society and some fashion, some were also neurodivergent, some were queer, and others were just eccentric or minorities. However, in college I was forced to spend a lot more time around normal people and in this context, I was provided with feedback that I didn't get from other weird people.
I've always struggled with loosely defined social concepts. What is considered nice or proper, what is manly or womanly, and what romance means to someone are all examples of loosely defined social concepts. I never really understood why someone would use these words or labels to define something that would differ so vastly from person to person. When I would question this many normal people would respond with questions for me - they were surprised that I was questioning these words. It wasn't framed in a negative way and it wasn't a judgment, but rather honest curiosity.
In addition, when working on projects together, I would often be told that I ask great questions. I don't think this particular aspect of my neurodivergence really set in until I started working. The continued feedback then my questions were great as well as comments on my ability to see the larger picture as well as minute details eventually made me realize that I think differently than most people. I also find it kind of amusing that whenever I try to describe this to people, they want me to put a finger on precisely how I differ. It's almost as an if simply because I think differently that I can magically start thinking like them as well and compare and contrast the differences.
At some point in the last decade I stopped caring or even trying to quantify how I think differently. Ultimately, I am who I am and I recognize that I am neurodivergent, but attempting to quantify it past that point doesn't seem particularly useful to me.
Something I really struggled with as a kid was that others just didn't seem interested in academic experimentation at all. A recurring theme of my early education was experimenting with the knowledge we were given to figure out more, with none of my peers sharing in that enthusiasm. Here are two examples I can remember:
Some time after learning single-digit addition and subtraction (I must've been six or seven?), I was at a friend's house and he had a toy that gave multiple-choice math questions, but it would only give the correct answer with no methodology—basically electronic flash cards. They had options for higher grade levels with multiplication and division and I was curious how those worked, so I hammered away at it until I could consistently answer both of them correctly—I know for sure I figured out multiplication and walked away with some grasp of division. I was so excited to tell my friend what I'd learned and I'd never seen anyone less interested in my life. Come on, older kids learn this stuff and I just figured it out, you can too!
Later in first or second grade, we had just learned column addition for two-digit numbers. I remember trying it on three-digit numbers with success, and was so excited about the realization that I could add numbers of any length to each other! I showed this to other kids by adding up these page-spanning monstrosities and explaining my process, only to be met with a dumbstruck expression each time. One told me something along the lines of "teacher only taught us two-digit numbers." I know that, but isn't it exciting that you can figure out the rest yourself?!
I am not different. I think that is a far more meaningful revelation, and one which I came to much later in life. People are mostly the same, in all the ways that matter. Sure everyone likes doing different things or likes different music or whatever but fundamentally most people are pretty much the same. They want security and fulfilment and happiness. They want good things for themselves and each other. The how people do that doesn't matter (although it is endlessly fascinating), the why does and those whys are the things which make us the same.
To look at it another way, if everyone is special - and in one sense every person very much is - then nobody is.
This doesn’t make me special or unique, but I’m sure there’s at least one person who’ll relate.
I spent my whole life listening to my teachers saying the same thing to my parents:
He’s smart, but very lazy and easily distracted
I thought they were just saying that to try and provide some kind of motivation. To make me change my behavior. It did nothing.
To my parents, I was committed to wasting my time and life by not caring about school.
All of this lead to a huge deal of frustration and disappointment. I really started to think it was impossible for me to change, no matter how much I tried.
Post-school, people kept saying the same sentence my teachers used to say, so I started to look at things differently… Maybe they were being honest about it… This made me start to research what was the issue, instead of thinking I was just lazy and couldn’t do anything.
A bit over a year ago I had my first appointment with a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with ADHD this year and started taking meds just a few months ago.
I have to admit I now (partly) understand what they were talking about. I can concentrate for large amounts of time and my “laziness” is less of an issue. I still don’t think I’m as smart or intelligent as everyone has told me.
It’s hard not to blame my parents… There’s no bad blood between us, as I want to think they were just lacking information on what the issue could be. At the same time I think they just weren’t paying enough attention… I still recall finding a newspaper cutout about hyperactivity and ADHD on my dad’s desk when I was 11/12, but they deny any knowledge of this.
Life goes on and we can’t fix our past so I have to try and shape my future while I still have time.
first comment here on Tildes. I thought it was the right one to make
I don't think I'm wildly different, but one thing that was impactful in forming my identity was that I took LSD at a fairly young age back in high school. I think it gave me an entirely different perspective on reality going forward (in a positive way, in my case) and it was just an experience none of my peers had really had.
My entire life, honestly. The problem was I tried to not be different and ruined my mental health by trying to force myself to be like everyone else, like things I didn't enjoy because "that's what everyone else likes" and I had to keep up appearances. It wasn't until much later that I came to grips with the fact I was worrying too much about trying to fit in and be one of the cool kids. I took a hard turn and decided to embrace being myself and enjoying my weird interests instead.
I've always known. I'm not white and was adopted as an infant by white parents. I also was the first foreign adoption in the area I grew up. Needless to say, it was always extremely obvious.
I've had various times throughout my life when I realised I was difference. Some of them don't count as realisations, but were always there in the background, or were forced upon me.
Two important turning points occurred within one month of starting at different schools.
My literal first memory is of being walked up a school corridor by my Grade Prep teacher. I was carrying my book bag and my cushion. We walked into a new classroom. I saw my Grade 1 teacher for the first time.
I was being promoted a grade, only one month after starting school.
My mother told me the story, years later. My habit during recesses and lunchtimes was to stay in the classroom, and not go out to play with the other children. This one particular time, I was standing at the teacher's desk, across from the teacher, while she was reading the newspaper. Suddenly, I asked her "What's a polly-tik-ian?" I had been reading her newspaper... upside-down... and I didn't recognise the word "politician".
The Grade Prep teacher was barely starting to teach her 5-year-old students their ABCs, and here was me reading adult-level text, upside-down. As she told my parents, there was nothing she could teach me.
So, I was promoted a grade.
I never had to realise I was different. This had been made clear to me from soon after starting school. It was just the background of my life. I was the kid who got put up a year. I was a year younger than my classmates... and I was still the smartest kid in class (until later in high school, when other smart kids turned up to share that honour).
I was isolated, outcast, different. From what my parents tell me, it was partly by own choice, but my memories are also that this was the other kids' choice as well. I didn't want to play with them, and they didn't want to play with me. I was different for my whole childhood.
A second turning point came one month after starting high school (Grades 7 to 12). I was 12 years old, and my classmates were about 13, on average. And, as happens, a lot of the other students were strangers to me because our high school took students from various primary schools in the area.
As part of our new high school life, we had different classes throughout the day, ranging from English and Maths to Physical Education and... Home Economics (how to cook). I had Home Economics as one of my classes in Grade 7.
I distinctly remember this moment.
Another boy threw a knife at me. Not to scare me. He was trying to hit me. Luckily, he missed.
In those first few weeks, he'd identified me as a quiet, academic, bookish, non-sporty type. Therefore, I was gay. That meant I was a target.
A target I became, and a target I remained - for the rest of my time at high school. All six years of it. I won't go into my experiences of being bullied at high school. Suffice to say, I graduated from high school with psychological damage that took about a decade to recover from, and which has scarred me for life.
Again... that's how I realised I was different. I was fine with being gay. I never had the slightest qualm about my own sexuality. I was fine with myself. My only problems with my sexuality came from other people. Again, I was outcast, isolated, and different - but, in contrast to primary school, where the other kids and I just left each other alone, in high school, a significant number of the other kids went out of their way to make my life miserable.
I was othered from an early age, for two very big reasons. I never had to realise I was different - other people were more than happy to point it out to me.
I was maybe 12 or 15. A kid in my class made a public invitation to their birthday. That was common back then, they used to write the time and place of the party on the chalkboard. I copied it in my notebook, and, on the day in question, went to their house. I didn't really know anyone, but they invited me so I was there. At one point, someone said, "@lou, what are you doing here?". You see, it turns out that the public invitation was just for show, and I was supposed to understand the complex social dynamic that determined who was really supposed to go. I finished eating my pasta and never went to a classmate's party again.
Now, I know what you're thinking: this guy must be on the spectrum. Well, according to a neuropsychologist, I am not autistic. But my psychiatrist believes I'm schizoid.
My parents had raised me on adult-level English; no baby talk whatsoever. My second grade teacher, who had previously taught sixth grade, told my parents that my vocabulary was beyond her ability to quantify. That was likely why that, while my classmates were mostly still learning how to read more than simple sentences, I was already on chapter books. That one parent-teacher conference unintentionally framed the next 10-15 years of my life
I struggled to find people my own age that I could relate to. I could converse easily with people old enough to be my grandparents, or would be seen as cool by those younger than me, because I would stop and actually listen to them. However, looking back now, I can count on one hand the number of people my own age I could really consider to be a true friend, and I'm fortunate to still be in contact with my best friend from school.
Now, just because I could easily talk to adults that doesn't mean that all academics were a walk in the park, far from it. But, I believe that because my parents instilled in me a love of knowledge and learning, that was what made me too "different" for my peers. I mean, I read the dictionary and encyclopedia for fun; not many kids I knew did that.
One particular instance stands out from (if I remember correctly) fifth grade. One of my classmates, in a moment of frustration, asked me "Man, what do you gotta use such big words for?" I could only shrug and say something like "This is just how I talk." It wasn't just the way I spoke, but I hadn't realized that some of my peers couldn't actually understand a portion of what I was saying.
In the end though, I don't regret the way I was raised. Sure, I was one of the more lonely kids, but I still managed to make friends here and there. I can look back on my childhood and say with certainty that whatever I lost was more than made up for by the things I managed to learn as a kid by truly listening to the adults in my life.
When I was in first or second grade, I was an okay student, middle of the pack, not one of the “smart kids”, but the thing is I didn’t really care to try. One day in third grade I believe, I decided that I was going to start trying. There was a class ranking system with the smart kids’ sitting on the desks all the way in the corner, the farthest away from the teacher. (The problematic kids would be right in front of the teacher to keep them in line). I wanted to be in that corner. If you were in the corner no one would bother you, it was the high ground and you could even nap. Great real estate. Anyway, I started getting As and Bs and eventually straight As. I moved up the rankings and years passed, I turned into a “smart kid”, it became part of my identity and I was recognized by students and teachers for my achievements. I kinda enjoyed the competitiveness of it as well. There were a couple of other kids who would still frequently get better grades than me. They became friends but we would still compete with each other, I would genuinely try to get to #1 but would often fall to #2 or #3. That taught me some humility, there’ll always be someone smarter than me. But something unexpected thing happened, those kids that were smarter than me on tests didn’t really meet their full potential as adults. After high school, they didn’t really seem to challenge themselves, didn’t go to competitive schools and get difficult degrees, didn’t go into exciting science related careers, they absolutely nailed school and then got boring desk jobs. Since we grew apart, I never understood what happened. Did they burn out? Did they only do well in school to please their parents? Did they not have a genuine curiosity for learning? Anyways, that part taught me that it isn’t just about intelligence or raw talent; I wasn’t as smart as them but i had grit. I kept going when others quit. Keeping that in mind has helped me achieve things that may have otherwise seemed out of reach.
Four Pokemon generations in, my answer to that started getting uncomfortable and muddy feeling like I need to click boy, lol. Picked girl instead. Flipped a switch in my brain.
One thing that stood out to me growing up was that I seemed to like different kinds of video games, movies, and music compared to my friends and many other people I knew. These are games like Animal Crossing and Chibi Robo, movies such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Akira, and music like KMFDM and Boards of Canada. My friends recognized this and would lightly tease me by saying things like "Oh this is definitely a C-Cab game".
This wasn't out of any intentional desire to be different. I think I was partially influenced by my brother's tastes and I just liked the way these things made me feel. It's actually been kind of nice to meet other people into those things, because I enjoy talking about these interests and sharing the love for them with others.
I would say it was less of a snap realization and more of a slow dawning that occurred sometime in the middle of college through my late twenties.
My schooling as a child was a mix of homeschooling and private school which greatly limited my social development. I always had some inclination of this, but the extent didn't hit me until I was a young adult. I got along well enough socially, donning a friendly face and being amicable to the best of my knowledge, but I was so clueless that I didn't know how clueless I was which meant I had been a royal mess all that time without realizing it. I'm in much better shape now in my thirties and can now in most situations come off as more or less normal (as far as I can tell, anyway) but there are still notable gaps and weaknesses that will either take several more years to smooth over or may just persist forever.
For the same reasons I've not felt like I've fit in anywhere in particular, which paradoxically got worse as I managed to get my life in better order, but by now the feeling is familiar enough to not bother me too much. In fact I would say the biggest problem is looking like I belong when in reality I don't — the incongruity is strange.
When I realized I didn't "see" social groups and tiers. I saw everyone as equal to myself. I also had zero judgement. I didn't see someone fat as fat, thin as thin, and so on. Appearance-based treatment just never occurred to me. Society changed for me the worse as I grew older.
When I was in early elementary, I knew how to read much better than my peers. But I was also kicked out of the classroom (my desk was put in the hallway) because I talked to much. My teacher wrote, “turbo mouth”, on my report card.
Age 10, I was putting together Radio Shack kits and listening to ATC on the VHF radio I made. I made a PC out of Lego that had a “functioning” floppy drive and you could open up to see the motherboard components.
Age 11, there was a new kid that everyone was afraid of because he was too cool and played hockey and had a huge house. He had older brothers and new lots of cool stuff and could easily physically intimidate him. He didn’t intimidate ME, and I became his best friend. And I realized I could “disarm” people, and that others couldn’t.
I distinctly remember realizing that I had to dumb it down to have more friends. That was age 12. I had to pretend I didn’t know the details or didn’t care so that I could fit in better, and once I fit in I could become a leader of sorts. People didn’t like know-it-alls, but they did cede to confidence.
Age 16, they streamed me into a gifted class where I could do ANYTHING I wanted for English and Social Studies 10 and 11, and I got an automatic A in both. They wanted to see what bright kids would do unhindered by curriculum. By then I knew I was “different” but still didn’t feel so.
As an adult, I remembered when I was 9 or 10, reading about how electromagnets in dams could generate AC electricity from flowing water (specifically rotating magnets), and I thought why don’t we use those in cars to recharge the batteries (because my parents car battery had recently died). And realized (as an adult) that as a kid I had conceptualized the “alternator” and was probably good at inventing stuff, but no one was there to guide and mentor me.
And so still almost 30 years later it has generally been…
I was different eversince I could remember. I would often frustrate my parents and other adults by doing things that I thought was normal. Other kids also preferred to stay away from me. I also got bullied a fair bit in my early childhood, but that stopped when I became a teenager.
But even as a teenager, I didn't have many friends. I would be in my seat and found whatever I was doing and sometimes the boys next to me would snigger/laugh and say things like "look at what she's doing."
They wouldn't bully me but they did think I was weird. And the confusing thing about that was that I tried really really hard to be as invisible and as normal as possible. But I just stood out for some reason. I don't know why.
Back to my home life, My mother would often say something like "Why are you like this?" "Why can't you be like everybody else?"
My father would get frustrated by me and I would get hit. My aunts and uncles didn't like having me around. They would invite all their nieces and nephews, but not me.
My teachers were also often frustrated with me and would complain about me to my parents. But I wouldn't know why. It would usually include how quiet I was and the refusal to engage when the class had to read a book out loud together. What did I do wrong? I hated homework and didn't really do them, but so did many other kids and the teacher didn't seem as frustrated by them.
I didn't know why. I didn't understand. I just internalised that I was annoying as a person. And developed the stance where if people didn't want me around, then I didn't want them around either.
I didn't understand people and they didn't understand me either. There were so many unsaid rules that you were supposed to intuitively know that I did not. If a teacher told you to place a chair anywhere, I would be lost but then all the other kids would know to stack them up in some arbitrary location together. How did they know to put it there?
Later on in my late teens, I obsessed over learning how to be human. How to socialise, what could you way or could not say. I observed people a lot. Came up with scripts in my head for potential conversations. Basically a dialogue chart with responses. I learned to be as inoffensive as possible in terms of behavior. Learned to read between the lines, learned body language. Learned how to socialise.
I got good enough at it that I have a lot of close friends now. I can network and socialise easily compared to my other introverted friends. I can understand and empathise and give responses that would help.
I've even given a talk to an entire crowd and I have thought classes before. I really don't mind public speaking now, although I would be very anxious leading up to it.
Which was what I used to think would be impossible for me.
Then I went to therapy. And after listening to my current issues and my childhood, my therapist pointed out that I sound like someone with autism.
I told him that I socialise just fine now. I don't have those issues anymore. And she said just because someone is autistic, it doesn't mean they can't learn.
So I don't know. We settled on Neurodivergent rather than autistic because I feel like mine is so mild, it would he a bit of an insult to those who have a lot to struggle with.
I've been different for pretty much as long as I can remember, and each new difference I noticed just got added to the pile without much fanfare.
A way more meaningful discovery for me was that I wasn't unique. And not being unique meant that I wasn't alone either. The traits I have didn't make me alien, broken, or incomplete, they were just traits you could have.
It specifically started somewhere in 2020 when I came across and joined an asexual meme community. Of course I wasn't asexual, it seemed like something I'd want to try one day, but I could relate to not getting why people would go wild for each other, or not knowing what the criteria for hotness even were.
For the next few months I kept coming across more things I related to until I decided to actually just read up on asexuality and it was me.
I thought I'd already gotten over my insecurities about sexuality and romance since that was my early twenties and I hadn't actively thought about it since high school, but at that moment I finally understood the idiom "a weight off your shoulders".
Since then I've been comfortable enough to explore more things and find more communities I relate to.
Kindergarten. As a minority in a majority white school, my (also white) teacher couldn't pronounce my ethnic name how my family members did. Heard it pronounced it the "white" way for the first time and it sounded all wrong. I remember correcting my teacher a few times and then just gave up. Also was embarrassed about my ethnic snacks haha.
Embarrassment/isolation for being different was one of the first emotional memories of grade school. Though I'm sure thats not an unusual experience for young kids.
A long time ago, in many many different ways. But so does everyone else, because we're all unique, aren't we?
But what I realized only just now: my special power is teaching. And I'm not a teacher. I was in highly paid B2B service oriented jobs all my life, but only now, in my mid-30s do I realize I'd probably want to be a teacher. Not sure what to do at this point.
It was so early that I honestly don't even know. Probably somewhere at 4-5 years old? And I remember telling a school psychologist at 9 or 10 that "I'm just weird I suppose" - I always got teased or even bullied because I just didn't fit in anywhere and never had. I sometimes feel like I still don't, but I've never had more friends than I do now, so I'm fine with being different nowadays. I am who I am and I don't really care anymore if people don't like me - life's too short to worry about getting people to like you, especially those that tend to passively shame you for being different. Besides, I don't want people to like me for whatever facade or mask I used to wear. I want them to like me for me, so I no longer pretend to be someone I'm not because that's a waste of everyone's time
I remember when starting kindergarten, it was unusual to already know how to read, to count to above 100, and other things like that. Being the smart kid, the one who usually got a perfect score on tests and was always reading, became a big part of my identity for a long while. (Along with "the kid who builds stuff out of Legos.")
But there were other smart kids and I wasn't particularly talented at anything non-academic. I was shy, quite bad at sports (picked nearly last for most teams), and it's not like I was popular. And of course there were older kids who were above us, and younger kids who were below. So it felt less like an advantage and more like a specialty, something parents and teachers were pleased by. This was my lot in life. I was okay with it and didn't question it. An adult might say I had a bright future, but I didn't really know what that meant.
I've always known I'm different on some level but it honestly wasn't until college that it really started to sink in. My entire life I've known that I've had some kind of neurodivergence, but it's been difficult to put my finger on it. Earlier in my life it that meant that I spent a lot of time with people who were weirder. My friends were all rejected by society and some fashion, some were also neurodivergent, some were queer, and others were just eccentric or minorities. However, in college I was forced to spend a lot more time around normal people and in this context, I was provided with feedback that I didn't get from other weird people.
I've always struggled with loosely defined social concepts. What is considered nice or proper, what is manly or womanly, and what romance means to someone are all examples of loosely defined social concepts. I never really understood why someone would use these words or labels to define something that would differ so vastly from person to person. When I would question this many normal people would respond with questions for me - they were surprised that I was questioning these words. It wasn't framed in a negative way and it wasn't a judgment, but rather honest curiosity.
In addition, when working on projects together, I would often be told that I ask great questions. I don't think this particular aspect of my neurodivergence really set in until I started working. The continued feedback then my questions were great as well as comments on my ability to see the larger picture as well as minute details eventually made me realize that I think differently than most people. I also find it kind of amusing that whenever I try to describe this to people, they want me to put a finger on precisely how I differ. It's almost as an if simply because I think differently that I can magically start thinking like them as well and compare and contrast the differences.
At some point in the last decade I stopped caring or even trying to quantify how I think differently. Ultimately, I am who I am and I recognize that I am neurodivergent, but attempting to quantify it past that point doesn't seem particularly useful to me.
Something I really struggled with as a kid was that others just didn't seem interested in academic experimentation at all. A recurring theme of my early education was experimenting with the knowledge we were given to figure out more, with none of my peers sharing in that enthusiasm. Here are two examples I can remember:
Some time after learning single-digit addition and subtraction (I must've been six or seven?), I was at a friend's house and he had a toy that gave multiple-choice math questions, but it would only give the correct answer with no methodology—basically electronic flash cards. They had options for higher grade levels with multiplication and division and I was curious how those worked, so I hammered away at it until I could consistently answer both of them correctly—I know for sure I figured out multiplication and walked away with some grasp of division. I was so excited to tell my friend what I'd learned and I'd never seen anyone less interested in my life. Come on, older kids learn this stuff and I just figured it out, you can too!
Later in first or second grade, we had just learned column addition for two-digit numbers. I remember trying it on three-digit numbers with success, and was so excited about the realization that I could add numbers of any length to each other! I showed this to other kids by adding up these page-spanning monstrosities and explaining my process, only to be met with a dumbstruck expression each time. One told me something along the lines of "teacher only taught us two-digit numbers." I know that, but isn't it exciting that you can figure out the rest yourself?!
I am not different. I think that is a far more meaningful revelation, and one which I came to much later in life. People are mostly the same, in all the ways that matter. Sure everyone likes doing different things or likes different music or whatever but fundamentally most people are pretty much the same. They want security and fulfilment and happiness. They want good things for themselves and each other. The how people do that doesn't matter (although it is endlessly fascinating), the why does and those whys are the things which make us the same.
To look at it another way, if everyone is special - and in one sense every person very much is - then nobody is.
This doesn’t make me special or unique, but I’m sure there’s at least one person who’ll relate.
I spent my whole life listening to my teachers saying the same thing to my parents:
I thought they were just saying that to try and provide some kind of motivation. To make me change my behavior. It did nothing.
To my parents, I was committed to wasting my time and life by not caring about school.
All of this lead to a huge deal of frustration and disappointment. I really started to think it was impossible for me to change, no matter how much I tried.
Post-school, people kept saying the same sentence my teachers used to say, so I started to look at things differently… Maybe they were being honest about it… This made me start to research what was the issue, instead of thinking I was just lazy and couldn’t do anything.
A bit over a year ago I had my first appointment with a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with ADHD this year and started taking meds just a few months ago.
I have to admit I now (partly) understand what they were talking about. I can concentrate for large amounts of time and my “laziness” is less of an issue. I still don’t think I’m as smart or intelligent as everyone has told me.
It’s hard not to blame my parents… There’s no bad blood between us, as I want to think they were just lacking information on what the issue could be. At the same time I think they just weren’t paying enough attention… I still recall finding a newspaper cutout about hyperactivity and ADHD on my dad’s desk when I was 11/12, but they deny any knowledge of this.
Life goes on and we can’t fix our past so I have to try and shape my future while I still have time.
first comment here on Tildes. I thought it was the right one to make
I don't think I'm wildly different, but one thing that was impactful in forming my identity was that I took LSD at a fairly young age back in high school. I think it gave me an entirely different perspective on reality going forward (in a positive way, in my case) and it was just an experience none of my peers had really had.
My entire life, honestly. The problem was I tried to not be different and ruined my mental health by trying to force myself to be like everyone else, like things I didn't enjoy because "that's what everyone else likes" and I had to keep up appearances. It wasn't until much later that I came to grips with the fact I was worrying too much about trying to fit in and be one of the cool kids. I took a hard turn and decided to embrace being myself and enjoying my weird interests instead.
I've always known. I'm not white and was adopted as an infant by white parents. I also was the first foreign adoption in the area I grew up. Needless to say, it was always extremely obvious.
I've had various times throughout my life when I realised I was difference. Some of them don't count as realisations, but were always there in the background, or were forced upon me.
Two important turning points occurred within one month of starting at different schools.
My literal first memory is of being walked up a school corridor by my Grade Prep teacher. I was carrying my book bag and my cushion. We walked into a new classroom. I saw my Grade 1 teacher for the first time.
I was being promoted a grade, only one month after starting school.
My mother told me the story, years later. My habit during recesses and lunchtimes was to stay in the classroom, and not go out to play with the other children. This one particular time, I was standing at the teacher's desk, across from the teacher, while she was reading the newspaper. Suddenly, I asked her "What's a polly-tik-ian?" I had been reading her newspaper... upside-down... and I didn't recognise the word "politician".
The Grade Prep teacher was barely starting to teach her 5-year-old students their ABCs, and here was me reading adult-level text, upside-down. As she told my parents, there was nothing she could teach me.
So, I was promoted a grade.
I never had to realise I was different. This had been made clear to me from soon after starting school. It was just the background of my life. I was the kid who got put up a year. I was a year younger than my classmates... and I was still the smartest kid in class (until later in high school, when other smart kids turned up to share that honour).
I was isolated, outcast, different. From what my parents tell me, it was partly by own choice, but my memories are also that this was the other kids' choice as well. I didn't want to play with them, and they didn't want to play with me. I was different for my whole childhood.
A second turning point came one month after starting high school (Grades 7 to 12). I was 12 years old, and my classmates were about 13, on average. And, as happens, a lot of the other students were strangers to me because our high school took students from various primary schools in the area.
As part of our new high school life, we had different classes throughout the day, ranging from English and Maths to Physical Education and... Home Economics (how to cook). I had Home Economics as one of my classes in Grade 7.
I distinctly remember this moment.
Another boy threw a knife at me. Not to scare me. He was trying to hit me. Luckily, he missed.
In those first few weeks, he'd identified me as a quiet, academic, bookish, non-sporty type. Therefore, I was gay. That meant I was a target.
A target I became, and a target I remained - for the rest of my time at high school. All six years of it. I won't go into my experiences of being bullied at high school. Suffice to say, I graduated from high school with psychological damage that took about a decade to recover from, and which has scarred me for life.
Again... that's how I realised I was different. I was fine with being gay. I never had the slightest qualm about my own sexuality. I was fine with myself. My only problems with my sexuality came from other people. Again, I was outcast, isolated, and different - but, in contrast to primary school, where the other kids and I just left each other alone, in high school, a significant number of the other kids went out of their way to make my life miserable.
I was othered from an early age, for two very big reasons. I never had to realise I was different - other people were more than happy to point it out to me.
I was maybe 12 or 15. A kid in my class made a public invitation to their birthday. That was common back then, they used to write the time and place of the party on the chalkboard. I copied it in my notebook, and, on the day in question, went to their house. I didn't really know anyone, but they invited me so I was there. At one point, someone said, "@lou, what are you doing here?". You see, it turns out that the public invitation was just for show, and I was supposed to understand the complex social dynamic that determined who was really supposed to go. I finished eating my pasta and never went to a classmate's party again.
Now, I know what you're thinking: this guy must be on the spectrum. Well, according to a neuropsychologist, I am not autistic. But my psychiatrist believes I'm schizoid.
Second grade.
My parents had raised me on adult-level English; no baby talk whatsoever. My second grade teacher, who had previously taught sixth grade, told my parents that my vocabulary was beyond her ability to quantify. That was likely why that, while my classmates were mostly still learning how to read more than simple sentences, I was already on chapter books. That one parent-teacher conference unintentionally framed the next 10-15 years of my life
I struggled to find people my own age that I could relate to. I could converse easily with people old enough to be my grandparents, or would be seen as cool by those younger than me, because I would stop and actually listen to them. However, looking back now, I can count on one hand the number of people my own age I could really consider to be a true friend, and I'm fortunate to still be in contact with my best friend from school.
Now, just because I could easily talk to adults that doesn't mean that all academics were a walk in the park, far from it. But, I believe that because my parents instilled in me a love of knowledge and learning, that was what made me too "different" for my peers. I mean, I read the dictionary and encyclopedia for fun; not many kids I knew did that.
One particular instance stands out from (if I remember correctly) fifth grade. One of my classmates, in a moment of frustration, asked me "Man, what do you gotta use such big words for?" I could only shrug and say something like "This is just how I talk." It wasn't just the way I spoke, but I hadn't realized that some of my peers couldn't actually understand a portion of what I was saying.
In the end though, I don't regret the way I was raised. Sure, I was one of the more lonely kids, but I still managed to make friends here and there. I can look back on my childhood and say with certainty that whatever I lost was more than made up for by the things I managed to learn as a kid by truly listening to the adults in my life.
When I was in first or second grade, I was an okay student, middle of the pack, not one of the “smart kids”, but the thing is I didn’t really care to try. One day in third grade I believe, I decided that I was going to start trying. There was a class ranking system with the smart kids’ sitting on the desks all the way in the corner, the farthest away from the teacher. (The problematic kids would be right in front of the teacher to keep them in line). I wanted to be in that corner. If you were in the corner no one would bother you, it was the high ground and you could even nap. Great real estate. Anyway, I started getting As and Bs and eventually straight As. I moved up the rankings and years passed, I turned into a “smart kid”, it became part of my identity and I was recognized by students and teachers for my achievements. I kinda enjoyed the competitiveness of it as well. There were a couple of other kids who would still frequently get better grades than me. They became friends but we would still compete with each other, I would genuinely try to get to #1 but would often fall to #2 or #3. That taught me some humility, there’ll always be someone smarter than me. But something unexpected thing happened, those kids that were smarter than me on tests didn’t really meet their full potential as adults. After high school, they didn’t really seem to challenge themselves, didn’t go to competitive schools and get difficult degrees, didn’t go into exciting science related careers, they absolutely nailed school and then got boring desk jobs. Since we grew apart, I never understood what happened. Did they burn out? Did they only do well in school to please their parents? Did they not have a genuine curiosity for learning? Anyways, that part taught me that it isn’t just about intelligence or raw talent; I wasn’t as smart as them but i had grit. I kept going when others quit. Keeping that in mind has helped me achieve things that may have otherwise seemed out of reach.
"Are you a boy? Or are you a girl?"
Four Pokemon generations in, my answer to that started getting uncomfortable and muddy feeling like I need to click boy, lol. Picked girl instead. Flipped a switch in my brain.
One thing that stood out to me growing up was that I seemed to like different kinds of video games, movies, and music compared to my friends and many other people I knew. These are games like Animal Crossing and Chibi Robo, movies such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Akira, and music like KMFDM and Boards of Canada. My friends recognized this and would lightly tease me by saying things like "Oh this is definitely a C-Cab game".
This wasn't out of any intentional desire to be different. I think I was partially influenced by my brother's tastes and I just liked the way these things made me feel. It's actually been kind of nice to meet other people into those things, because I enjoy talking about these interests and sharing the love for them with others.
I would say it was less of a snap realization and more of a slow dawning that occurred sometime in the middle of college through my late twenties.
My schooling as a child was a mix of homeschooling and private school which greatly limited my social development. I always had some inclination of this, but the extent didn't hit me until I was a young adult. I got along well enough socially, donning a friendly face and being amicable to the best of my knowledge, but I was so clueless that I didn't know how clueless I was which meant I had been a royal mess all that time without realizing it. I'm in much better shape now in my thirties and can now in most situations come off as more or less normal (as far as I can tell, anyway) but there are still notable gaps and weaknesses that will either take several more years to smooth over or may just persist forever.
For the same reasons I've not felt like I've fit in anywhere in particular, which paradoxically got worse as I managed to get my life in better order, but by now the feeling is familiar enough to not bother me too much. In fact I would say the biggest problem is looking like I belong when in reality I don't — the incongruity is strange.
When I had to fake being attracted to my boyfriend in highschool. I'm asexual and aromantic.
When I realized I didn't "see" social groups and tiers. I saw everyone as equal to myself. I also had zero judgement. I didn't see someone fat as fat, thin as thin, and so on. Appearance-based treatment just never occurred to me. Society changed for me the worse as I grew older.
When I was in early elementary, I knew how to read much better than my peers. But I was also kicked out of the classroom (my desk was put in the hallway) because I talked to much. My teacher wrote, “turbo mouth”, on my report card.
Age 10, I was putting together Radio Shack kits and listening to ATC on the VHF radio I made. I made a PC out of Lego that had a “functioning” floppy drive and you could open up to see the motherboard components.
Age 11, there was a new kid that everyone was afraid of because he was too cool and played hockey and had a huge house. He had older brothers and new lots of cool stuff and could easily physically intimidate him. He didn’t intimidate ME, and I became his best friend. And I realized I could “disarm” people, and that others couldn’t.
I distinctly remember realizing that I had to dumb it down to have more friends. That was age 12. I had to pretend I didn’t know the details or didn’t care so that I could fit in better, and once I fit in I could become a leader of sorts. People didn’t like know-it-alls, but they did cede to confidence.
Age 16, they streamed me into a gifted class where I could do ANYTHING I wanted for English and Social Studies 10 and 11, and I got an automatic A in both. They wanted to see what bright kids would do unhindered by curriculum. By then I knew I was “different” but still didn’t feel so.
As an adult, I remembered when I was 9 or 10, reading about how electromagnets in dams could generate AC electricity from flowing water (specifically rotating magnets), and I thought why don’t we use those in cars to recharge the batteries (because my parents car battery had recently died). And realized (as an adult) that as a kid I had conceptualized the “alternator” and was probably good at inventing stuff, but no one was there to guide and mentor me.
And so still almost 30 years later it has generally been…
I was different eversince I could remember. I would often frustrate my parents and other adults by doing things that I thought was normal. Other kids also preferred to stay away from me. I also got bullied a fair bit in my early childhood, but that stopped when I became a teenager.
But even as a teenager, I didn't have many friends. I would be in my seat and found whatever I was doing and sometimes the boys next to me would snigger/laugh and say things like "look at what she's doing."
They wouldn't bully me but they did think I was weird. And the confusing thing about that was that I tried really really hard to be as invisible and as normal as possible. But I just stood out for some reason. I don't know why.
Back to my home life, My mother would often say something like "Why are you like this?" "Why can't you be like everybody else?"
My father would get frustrated by me and I would get hit. My aunts and uncles didn't like having me around. They would invite all their nieces and nephews, but not me.
My teachers were also often frustrated with me and would complain about me to my parents. But I wouldn't know why. It would usually include how quiet I was and the refusal to engage when the class had to read a book out loud together. What did I do wrong? I hated homework and didn't really do them, but so did many other kids and the teacher didn't seem as frustrated by them.
I didn't know why. I didn't understand. I just internalised that I was annoying as a person. And developed the stance where if people didn't want me around, then I didn't want them around either.
I didn't understand people and they didn't understand me either. There were so many unsaid rules that you were supposed to intuitively know that I did not. If a teacher told you to place a chair anywhere, I would be lost but then all the other kids would know to stack them up in some arbitrary location together. How did they know to put it there?
Later on in my late teens, I obsessed over learning how to be human. How to socialise, what could you way or could not say. I observed people a lot. Came up with scripts in my head for potential conversations. Basically a dialogue chart with responses. I learned to be as inoffensive as possible in terms of behavior. Learned to read between the lines, learned body language. Learned how to socialise.
I got good enough at it that I have a lot of close friends now. I can network and socialise easily compared to my other introverted friends. I can understand and empathise and give responses that would help.
I've even given a talk to an entire crowd and I have thought classes before. I really don't mind public speaking now, although I would be very anxious leading up to it.
Which was what I used to think would be impossible for me.
Then I went to therapy. And after listening to my current issues and my childhood, my therapist pointed out that I sound like someone with autism.
I told him that I socialise just fine now. I don't have those issues anymore. And she said just because someone is autistic, it doesn't mean they can't learn.
So I don't know. We settled on Neurodivergent rather than autistic because I feel like mine is so mild, it would he a bit of an insult to those who have a lot to struggle with.
When people started pretending to know what I am saying
I've been different for pretty much as long as I can remember, and each new difference I noticed just got added to the pile without much fanfare.
A way more meaningful discovery for me was that I wasn't unique. And not being unique meant that I wasn't alone either. The traits I have didn't make me alien, broken, or incomplete, they were just traits you could have.
It specifically started somewhere in 2020 when I came across and joined an asexual meme community. Of course I wasn't asexual, it seemed like something I'd want to try one day, but I could relate to not getting why people would go wild for each other, or not knowing what the criteria for hotness even were.
For the next few months I kept coming across more things I related to until I decided to actually just read up on asexuality and it was me.
I thought I'd already gotten over my insecurities about sexuality and romance since that was my early twenties and I hadn't actively thought about it since high school, but at that moment I finally understood the idiom "a weight off your shoulders".
Since then I've been comfortable enough to explore more things and find more communities I relate to.