#life as a weird kid not neurotypical young adult has been ... strange so far

[bitsofsciencelife]

All my younger life I have been not normal enough, not jock enough, just a nerd. But then I entered Uni and now it turns out I'm not nerdy enough!! 😭

Will I ever be enough??

[apostatively]

I was homeschooled until third grade, and as an adult looking back on everything now I know I wasn't a neurotypical kid. My first day ever of school, my third grade teacher Mrs. Kennedy (an absolute baller btw) told us to take out a piece of paper and "something to write with" for a small spelling quiz to assess where we were so far. Not realizing that when teachers said that they meant specific paper and a pen or pencil and not to randomly select a steno pad and one of my new pink markers, I was surprised and mortified when Mrs. Kennedy stopped the quiz a few minutes later to tell me that I was "doing well" (my answers were right), but I needed to correct my writing tools, and she didn't resume the quiz until I had them copied down correctly. The kids near me were turned around staring at me, super amused, like I was doing something crazy. It was the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me, and I had no way of seeing it coming. From the first five minutes of my public school career, I was constantly, secretly terrified of messing up again where anyone could see. So I had this learning curve to catch up on socially, and because of that and what I now know to be anxiety I feel like I'll never really know what was really going on in my brain, if I worked so hard to take my cues from everyone around me because I so badly didn't want to stand out in a group, or because I really didn't know how to interact "normally" with other kids and needed to frantically mask to keep up. It's not a question anyone thought to ask me in 1997, and I definitely wasn't speaking up. I do remember always acutely feeling that being at school, being with other kids, was so much easier for *other* kids, and something I was constantly having to mimic, shapeshifting, like I was outside looking on at everyone else (often, at recess, literally) and tap-dancing from day to day. And that was even before fourth grade, before we started learning algebra and whereas math had previously been okay-just-not-as-fun-as-reading, it was now impossible, and just learning let alone the social problems were now an uphill battle. I'm the only one who knows that I was almost constantly bored unless I was making up stories in my head. My little brother was the one who couldn't fake his way through school, so he was the one who got tested for behavioral issues until someone in his high school years finally diagnosed him as ASD (though at that time they still shied away from the "autism" label even though imo he's a dead ringer for it) and I was the one who kept my head down and lived in fear of my teachers and cried in every math class while my own brain heaped abuse on me and doodled in my notebook because time went faster when I drew and it was something I wasn't terrible at, and failed and failed and failed. I grew up and am still, to this day, terrified to ask for anything for myself - I remember my aunt taking us cousins to the Dollar Store and specifically telling us to pick out a toy and standing there, terrified to ask for anything because that would mean I was selfish and wrong and bad, and everybody would turn and look at me and know it, and my aunt would be furious, even though these thoughts were all completely irrational and I grew up in a family that loved us and would never treat us that terribly - but even today kids will run up to their parents with trinkets in my store saying "Can I have this??" and I'll be equally proud of their courage and scared that something bad will happen to them. And I'm sure it didn't stick with her, but I vividly remember walking down the hall to lunch next to Belinda, a short girl with very curly hair who'd been seeking ME out to play with of late, but I didn't know, how could I know unless she told me - so I asked her, "Hey, are we friends?" and she just looked at me strangely and said "Huh?" so I quickly mumbled "Nothing," and kept walking as my brain recorded forever "Okay, so asking questions like that is a no, and also we can't trust anyone to actually like us ever. She probably thought you were crazy, maybe you could have been friends if you hadn't weirded her out and ruined it," etc. etc. etc. The only question I have about getting our future kids tested for developmental disorders or learning issues is "How young is still too young to get a conclusive idea of what's going on for them specifically?" It feels so shitty to just be learning things about yourself in your twenties, from random strangers who have been diagnosed with whatever writing about their own experiences that resonate so strongly you feel like they're talking about you. People shouldn't have over a decade of constant effort met with constant failure before a college professor sees them struggling and randomly suggests they get tested for a learning disability in a specific area. Young adults starting out in life shouldn't have to crash and burn and look at their life absolutely falling apart around them, unable to prevent it, before it occurs to them, "You know, it seems like a lot of people don't have the problems I'm having with these very basic things." I don't intend to coddle or excuse, but if my kids need an extra fifteen minutes to finish a test or to talk with somebody trained who can help them with their problems, they will fucking have it. They're going to at least know what cards they're playing with.