Too 'normal' to say I am AS, too 'strange' to say no disabil

Post Reply New Topic

That's a great way to put it - I might use that some time, because I fell that way, too. I sometimes wonder if I'm "diagnosable" now, as an adult, but reading this forum convinced me that, whether I'm technically an Aspie or not, I think too much like one to just ignore it and pretend I'm normal.

I indeed feel like, and my Aspie/NT scores in my signature seem to confirm that, I am sort of a hybrid of Aspie and NT, and may barely qualify as someone with Asperger's. I've had to work at team sports and small talk, am still bad at body language, and can't stand people talking when I'm trying to sleep or study. But I've always had good coordination, I can pass as much more NT than autistic, and I've become a lot more flexible since my teens. People with full-on autism are about as far in the opposite direction from me as I am from a NT.

I feel, like, the complete opposite compared to a severely Autistic person. I remember I had a best friend at school who had an older brother with Autism, and he was so severe that he hadn't ever said a word in his life and he was two years older than my friend. He just preferred to strut around with just shorts on, in a darkened room full of toys, away from people. When I went over there, we wasn't allowed anywhere near his playroom, because if he saw other children he would just run off and try his hardest to isolate himself. That's how severely Autistic he was, and he had meltdowns at any little noise, and his mother could never bond with him or even tell what he was thinking. She couldn't even take him out because he was quite an embarrassment in public. In the end he got too much for her and so they had to send him to a care home. Now he's 24 and needs 24 hour care, and just lives in nappies.
Now, I can't say I have anything in common with him. I went to mainstream school, didn't make many friends but I coped well with other children enough to be happy, and at home I could be a bit ''tantrumy'' but I did things what other typical children did; played Sega games, climbed trees, played imaginative games along with other children, rode around on my bike, played with toys, watched cartoons, et cetera. And I didn't have a problem with lights or wearing clothes. There were some noises what upset me but it didn't cause me to have meltdowns, I just got a little petrified and that was it (at sudden noises like dogs barking or bells ringing), plus I told people what noises I liked and didn't like. When my brother's friends came round, I did the opposite of trying to isolate myself - I wanted to play with them and I always did (if my brother let me, you know what big brothers are like). My mum could always bond to me and I never had any issues with expressing my thoughts and feelings. I didn't mind being touched either (I still don't mind now). I was nowhere near like my friend's Autistic brother.

Also I developed typically with milestones when I was a baby, like I learned to walk at the average age, and learned to speak at the average age. I can prove that because my parents kept a record of all my milestones, and they are pretty impressive, I wasn't surprisingly early or worryingly late in anything. I was quite early with potty-training, apparently I stopped wearing nappies before I was 2 and a half.