I can never forget I'm different, no matter how I try . . .
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This morning I was at the gym as part of my twice-weekly effort to halt my inevitable decline. As I lay on the floor, twisting myself in knots, two people were talking about their respective travels. One was just back from Virginia and Arizona after touring two schools with her son. The other had been to Louisiana and Pennsylvania for the same thing, and they compared their journeys and the t-shirts and other swag they returned home with.
One asked the other how her kid felt going across the country for college. The other talked about how she felt with all the traveling back and forth. On my back, on the floor, I considered that I had no experience whatever like theirs.
I’ve been to all those states and more, visiting their universities to talk about neurodiversity and autism. But I never had the student experience. I never left home for a dorm, never experienced class as a student, and when I got older and had a kid, he never did those things either.
It’s not that we are uneducated; it’s just that neither of us needed a college to get there. The idea of spending four, six, or eight years studying something I want to do is somewhat unfathomable. I have never been described as incompetent or unskilled at anything I’ve done, even as I taught myself what I needed to know on the fly.
I realized that is one more example of how my different brain sets me apart from others, that I never had those college experiences either as a student or as a parent. Perhaps it was my social disability – which was significant early in my life – that kept me out of school. There was also the small matter of flunking out of high school – which I now attribute to the school’s focus on “doing things the way they teach” and requiring me to “show my work.” Correct answers alone were never enough.
Whatever it was – probably a combination of things – I abandoned the school track for training myself on the fly. Time has proven that to have been a winning strategy for me. But it also isolates me, at times like this morning. I had nothing to add to that conversation; all I could do is listen and ponder how different that was from my life.
No matter how successful I am; no matter how many people like me or love me, I am reminded at moments like those that I am always different, and it makes me feel a bit sad.
I didn’t choose to be how I am; it’s the only life I know.
(c) 2007-2011 John Elder Robison
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I am AuDHD. I went. It seems it's not really there to teach you much, especially if you're autodidactic, it's more for networking and having a fancy paper. I only have the paper
As a fellow autistic, I can’t tell you how much your words resonate with me. Reading this post, I felt that deep, familiar pang of existing in a world that, despite all my successes and personal growth, still finds ways to remind me that I’m different. Like you, I’ve often found myself as the observer rather than the participant, sitting on the sidelines of conversations that revolve around experiences I never had and probably never will.
Your book, Look Me in the Eye, changed my life. It was the first time I saw myself in someone else’s story—not just as an outsider, but as someone whose differences had value. Your ability to articulate the autistic experience with honesty, wit, and depth has been a guiding light for me. You inspired me so much that I am currently writing two books about my own journey: Stoneface and Trying to Connect.
I, too, took the unconventional route. The idea of following the well-worn path—school, dorms, social circles, the so-called “normal” way of growing up—never made sense to me. I carved my own way, learning and adapting in a world that wasn’t built for the way my mind works. And while that has brought me a sense of pride, there are still those moments, like the one you described at the gym, where I’m reminded that no matter how far I’ve come, I’m still different. That reminder is both a badge of honor and, at times, a lonely truth.
Your words remind me that I’m not alone in this experience, that there are others out there who feel the same push and pull—success and isolation, triumph and disconnect. Thank you for continuing to put these feelings into words. You don’t just speak for yourself—you speak for so many of us who have felt this way but didn’t know how to express it.
With admiration and gratitude,
C. V. Wooster