Growing Up

Over the last few days I have been thinking about me and my growing up not knowing I had Aspergers Autism.

I do know that all my life I have always felt I was different to everyone else, finally knowing why has made things easier, but I do wish I had of known when I was just a young child around 8 to 10 years old, I think then so much more would have made sense to me.

I've always watched people and mimicked what I saw and considered "normal" behaviour.

One thing I couldnt mimic was the ability to want and to keep friends. I was happy alone. I of course did have sisters but much of the time I felt they were ashamed of me for various reasons. My younger sister got to a certain age were she no longer wanted to be my friend. Now as adults we have all gone our own ways and hardly keep in touch... of course for me that is just part of me... the not staying in contact... I know that I should, but there is no drive like what "normal" people have to be in contact with the people in their lives.

I just hope that my sisters know that I do love them with all my heart and would give them a lung if they needed it ... or any other body part I could spare... because they mean the world to me.

As do my nieces and nephews.

I think living so far away from my family is hard for me, because I love them so much and because in truth they are really the only people that I have a strong connection to, other than David.

But in the world David is the only person who really knows me, when you come down to it I have been with him for 18 years now and in that time we havent been a part more than a week, so he sees my autism characteristics and deals with my meltdowns and my needing things to be certain ways... Where as my sisters and other family members really havent spent anywhere near 18 years with me.

You also can not count the very early years of childhood because as a baby and infant of up to 4 or 5 years you really are not as aware of those around you, you dont take notice of them.

So from the time I was born my older sisters were really in my life for only 8 to 10 years before they moved out of home and into homes of their own and children of their own.. so take the first 5 years off of that and that means I was only really aware of them for about 3 to 5 years where we lived in the same house.

For my younger sister if you take off the first 5 years then it would be slightly longer that we lived together in the same house, about 9 to 10 years.

So it would be very easy for my sisters to not see my Autistic characteristics and if they did see any it would be easy to pass them off as my being a little eccentric, a little odd.

Even now I do not know if they accept it or understand it or believe it... Its probably easy to go back to thinking that I am "normal"

Although for me as I said, I always knew that I was different, even while trying so very hard to fit in with those around me.

I tried at school to make friends but I dont think I really had any friends, I never when to peoples houses or had sleep overs, was never invited to birthday parties, even though at the age of 10 and again at 12 I did have birthday parties were I was able to invite some people I knew from school, although most had parents that were friends with my parents.

I know that most of the time during recess or lunch I would spend my time alone at the back of the oval or somewhere else like that, where I could watch the other kids playing together and I could just sit and watch the tree's and the animals.. like ants or birds or caterpillars ....

I guess maybe thats why I enjoyed camping and fishing and swimming, growing up as those were activities were I could come across as "normal" even to my family because these were activities were you didnt have to interact too much.

One memory I enjoy about fishing was when I caught a catfish one time and needed my younger sisters help to pull it in...

I really do like it when I am able to connect with my family, because I do love them so much and those moments are very rare and so special to me.

Its rather lonely not feeling connected to people... think of it as being connected to everyone by computer and then think of how that would be if you lost that connection... you know the people are still there but you cant connect / interact with them because you have no Internet connection...

Thats what its like for me.. I know that people are there and are connected to each other but my connection has no power to connect so I know its there and available but I am not able to log in.

When people do interact with me, they seem to be only able to keep it up for a limited amount of time before they fade away from me.

I do now try and explain to people that if I am not talking to you or replying to messages or posts, even if I said I would, then you need to to contact me again because sometimes I just need a reminder to interact with you.

I sometimes would like to know how family and people from school remember me growing up .. did they notice anything different about me... did they think I was slightly off, slight eccentric, slightly weird ?

:)

I so wish I was better at social interaction and knowing what is acceptable and what isnt.

Growing up I always connected better to animals than people... I always felt such a strong connection, even to caterpillars, frogs, butterflies, tadpoles and so on.

I considered becoming a vet when younger but I wouldnt have been able to deal with seeing animals in pain, and I certainly wouldnt be able to put animals to sleep.

I think it is unfair that we put animals to sleep that we believe are suffering from pain but we let other human beings who are suffering live in pain... at least humans can actually say Yes I want to end my suffering ...

We also put animals to sleep just because they can not find homes, yet we do not put our homeless humans to sleep..

Animals to me are a life line to the world and growing up my inner world was full of wild animal friends.

Now as an Adult unable to have children, animals are not only my friends but also my family.

Of course because I do gett attached to animals, it means I tend to have a lot of dogs, cats or other animals in my life and I am always wanting more, even though I shouldnt ... I like it when David says I cant have some animals, even though at the time I dont like it and he has to deal with my being upset, but later I understand it is probably better that I didnt get it, although knowing that doesnt stop me from still wanting what I did. 

:)