when did you notice your social life sucked?

Jan74 · Yellow-bellied Woodpecker Joined: Jun 26, 2008 Posts: 55

I got "doesn't play well with other kids" and variations in every single report card ever, and was sent to see the school counselor all the time. Also, I took a lot of notes back and forth between the school counselor and my therapist, and that I see a therapist was put as a condition so that I could remain in High School. They didn't know what was wrong with me at the time, but they knew something was wrong. I was sent to therapists and neurologists for testing pretty much nonstop after I was 2 1/2, cause I taught myself to read and write and had the abnormally high vocabulary. Then when I was 8, my uncle married a woman who was a psychologist working at an autism research center and she also did extensive testing on me.
I just remember IQ and other tests happening all the time, and until junior high, I had to attend "progressive" private schools who would take me. I was kicked out of a "regular" 1st grade class after 2 months. By junior high I had good coping strategies, I think, and managed to go to a "regular" school, although there were the therapy requirements and the "be more involved with school activities" requirements (it meant a lot of attending games I wasn't interested in, copying other people in attendance when they cheered).
So I knew there was something wrong when I was about 3 or 4. I have this memory of at 2, memorizing story books people read to me word by word, and then "reading" them to my younger cousin. I knew which words went on each page, even before I started reading billboards spontaneously. I had a realization I wasn't like my cousins. I also remember, at 3, telling my uncle there was something on the "wall", and pointing to the ceiling, and he telling me that was a ceiling, then me going around the house pointing to every single wall repeating "wall", then to the ceiling saying "ceiling", until I had it memorized, and overhearing him say something like "mom, check out what she is doing... I don't think she behaves like a normal child". My parents knew something was up at 2 1/2, with the reading. My aunt knew when she met me. But nobody used the Asperger's word until I was 25, cause it wasn't even a diagnosis and autists didn't speak, so I wasn't autistic, clearly. That is when I got an official diagnosis when I went to a doctor for anxiety.
I spent my whole life convinced I was just "quirky" to other people - knowing there was something wrong, but thinking I fooled people well enough. I didn't have a problem with work, after all, and had a few friendships. I was so disappointed in myself a couple years ago, when a former childhood classmate found me online and sent me a message saying she was "glad I was doing so well, considering all that I had overcome" and it burst that illusion. All I could think was "crap, everybody knew all along there was something wrong with me!" I can laugh about it now, but I cried for a couple of weeks at the time.