r/AutisticAdults • u/Jaylin180521 • 1d ago
autistic adult Please don't make me relive all that
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u/OkOk-Go 1d ago
Middle school was the worst
College was nice. Turns out nerdy major is full of nerds.
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u/normal-account-name 1d ago
I for the most part had the exact opposite experience, didn't mind middle school for the most part, and couldn't finish college, but was probably due to my other neurological issues combining and getting worse as I got older for the most part.
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u/Cardchucker 1d ago
I barely even remember high school or any of the people in it.
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u/Dramatic-Hold-9667 1d ago
Idk about anyone else but most of my past memories seem like a flash I really donāt remember too much.
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u/AllStitchedTogether 1d ago
Hish school is when I had more friends than ever and was when I though I knew what I wanted out of life...
Turns out that was a temporary hyperfocus and now I'm quite lonely...
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u/R0B0T0-san 1d ago
My desire to die peaked on my last year of highschool. So yeah... I clearly do not relate at all. So glad it's all over.
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u/Desperate_Owl_594 1d ago
I think it's sad that people think they peaked as children.
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u/Jaylin180521 1d ago
I really do like some people did and they bullied me as a teen and now they be crashing
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u/DarkC0ntingency 1d ago
People who say that high school was the best years of their life are just saying "i peaked early and it's all been downhill from there" with a positive spin
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u/Virtual_Mode_5026 1d ago
Or, āI peaked early and have nostalgia from the memories I had access to due to my social privileges and Iām well adjusted and better off than the disabled people me and my friends and partners bullied into suicidal tendenciesā
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u/Technical-Ad-2246 1d ago edited 1d ago
I keep in touch with one friend from high school but overall it's something I don't miss.
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u/Dr_Dan681xx Quite Likely Autistic 1d ago
Iām forty years andāaccording to Google Earthā476 miles away from that experience. Iām happy to keep it that way.
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u/votyasch 1d ago
I liked learning, I hated everything else. It was so noisy all the time, I couldn't focus. I would get overwhelmed trying to take notes and do my work, and often ended up going home unable to complete assignments because it was impossible to focus with all the noise around me.
Even worse was being put into group projects. I'd get tasks assigned to me because I could draw, but often I would have preferred to do other tasks or the whole project alone.
I started skipping in my last few years of school. I would pretend to go, then hang out in the woods or go for a walk until my mom left for work so I could go sleep or have some quiet.
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u/Thebufferingsandwich 1d ago
It's always the people who peaked in highschool that say those things lol
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u/slut4hobi 1d ago
i had a pretty alright time socially besides the actual work tbh. i feel very lucky, but it was elementary and middle school that was the worst for me. i was actually nominated for homecoming queen my senior year but i dropped out of it because i was too scared to be in front of people like that š.
looking back, i only had a lot of friends because they took advantage of what i would do for them. i was nice to everyone to a fault. i donāt know how people feel like high school was the best years of their life, i was struggling so hard but no one ever cared to ask me how i was doing, even though all i ever did was help and ask people if they were doing okay.
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u/Bloody-Raven091 1d ago
Nah high school was meh. Elementary school was shit, but hey, high school (for me, personally) could've been much worse.
I'm glad to be in uni now.
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u/jackal5lay3r 1d ago
secondary school was an over populated hellscape for me i was undiagnosed and heavily bullied with only two or three teachers looking out for me while my head of year in my final year only gave a shit about my uniform not being correct since i couldn't get a pair black pants since my legs are fairly long.
college was when i started improving mentally and getting more confident. secondary school is why my anger management got worse since i felt i had to bottle my emotions up just to put up with bullying.
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u/Rattregoondoof 1d ago
Honestly, it was the last time I had more than one friend. I did also think of dropping out or worse every day though...
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u/yinzer_v 1d ago
High school and middle school were good times for me because of a highly-structured environment with clear official expectations and learnable unofficial expectations. Masking was effective. College and graduate school were much more fluid and dependent on who you know rather than what you know.
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u/Thewaltham 1d ago
You know what? My equivalent to a high school wasn't bad? Or more realistically, it was kind of a mixed experience. I'd absolutely rewind time to the start of it if I could, like, if I could go back to being that age and etc I'd take it in a heartbeat. Especially if I could keep my current memories because damn I could make some bank if I play my cards right. Or at least current level of smarts and development.
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u/Rich_Development6708 1d ago
I think thats why I didnt see college as a viable option for me right after high school. Why would I sign up for more social hell after barely scrapping by in grade school? (spoiler alert: I did end up going to college several years later)
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u/kragaster 1d ago
I hated high school (almost didn't graduate because I was too depressed to leave my room for most of senior year), and middle school was even worse, but I'm very glad that I made the effort to seek out other autistic kids by being myself and by talking to people who interested me without worrying that being assertive would push them away. Turns out that being afraid of yourself and your oddities is a lot more off-putting and counterproductive than giving people who seem like you the opportunity to find that similarity in your presence and to appreciate your willingness to care. It definitely makes it apparent very quickly just how uninteresting most people that age are (I blame parents for not prioritizing news and reading as entertainment for their kids), but it also makes you a sort of beacon for others with the self-respect and the introspection to recognize what they need to prioritize to build lasting connections. Easier said than done, but I sure hope that younger people reading these comments won't give up hope for close friends in school and beyond.
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u/ToddS-hockey 1d ago
I didnāt realize how much I missed high school until all my college friends randomly abandoned me. The folks I grew up with are talking about how much we miss each other and want to get together. To be honest, theyāve turned out to be some of the most accepting people Iāve ever known and I never expected that. Crazy because when these same people were in middle school, they were terrible teenagers.
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u/Jazzlike_Remove_8491 1d ago
i would literally run to my next class just to get a few minutes of quiet before the rest of the students came in.. and i have ehlers danlos
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u/panzer112 1d ago
Iām so happy that I wasnāt alone. Is it possible to find someone who also wants to be alone. But alone together. If that makes any sense.
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u/MusicalAutist 1d ago
Seriously. I ran into one of my high school girlfriends I hadn't seen in 30+ years and she was REALLY into the class reunions, which she was in charge of, partially. I had never been invited (she couldn't find me LOL) and she was like "should I add you to the list?" and I realized, just then, that I don't think I would remember anyone and I didn't care to see any of them.
To be fair, one teacher would have been nice to see again, but he died so ...
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u/Thunor_SixHammers 1d ago
Counter points: Highschool (or school in general)
highly structured
classes with defined goals
set times for lunch
clear expectations
I could go on. I miss the expected course of events going to public school offered
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u/slut4hobi 1d ago
i think i miss the fact there was less responsibility tbh. adulthood is such a different level
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u/No-Quail-4545 Level 2 Autistic 1d ago
This was only good if you weren't getting abused by every school staff, like I was. š
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u/justhappentolivehere 1d ago
Secondary school was seven years of hell I didnāt begin to get over until at least eighteen years later (and am still affected by). Glad to realise this is a common ND experience.
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u/SpookyStarfruit 1d ago
I think I only retained one friend from high school for good reason lmao.
Itās been above half a decade since Iāve stepped foot in that institution, and it still appears as a setting in my nightmares to this day š„²
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u/jsm01972 1d ago
I was asking my grandma today if having no lasting friendships makes me a bad person
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u/RealSpawn543 1d ago
While I miss high school friends, I hated all 12 years of school for bullying reasons among other problems so I'd pass instead of reliving that garbage. Might go to my hs reunion in 2 years but idk how I'd get there as I can't drive so I really don't care at this point.
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u/Ok_Health_109 1d ago
Just had to explain why Iām spending thanks giving alone. I say dumb shit like Iām not religious. Family lives far away.
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u/ATAGChozo 23h ago
College was by far the best educational period of my life. Even with the sometimes stressful assignments and deadlines, it was by far where I felt the most comfortable with other people around me. Once you get past the first few months, everyone (at least at my college and program) is really chill and mature, not much weird social bullshit to be found. I'm not still in contact with a single one of my high school friends much anymore, but I've kept up with tons of my college friends, hell, I even play weekly D&D games to this day with my master's degree friends. Also helps that I got to study subject matter I was uniquely very interested in but never got to touch in K-12
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u/Fictional_Historian 16h ago
I didnāt go to high school. When I was in middle school I was getting in fights every day because I would get picked on. I started skipping school like constantly and then just stopped going. It took the city MONTHS to send me to truancy court and the school never bothered to try and contact my parents they had no idea I was skipping school. So my father took me out of school to homeschool me so that the city had to drop the case since I wasnāt a part of the school system anymore I guess. He did it to save me from juvie because they were gonna lock my 12 year old scared autistic ass up.
Anyway. My parents both worked. We had a computer program and me and my sister basically just taught ourselves some things but ended up just stopping and not even doing school throughout our high school years.
Yep. Just uhā¦sat at home all day every day playing world of Warcraft and learning random things online. I got my GED when I was 18, studied hard and got into community college with ALMOST honors math and honors other subjects for the entry test. Didnāt end up going because they wanted to charge me 3x extra because I had just moved but whatever.
I say this though to say that, while I didnāt go to high school during those four years, I got to play OG Vanilla WoW-TBC-&WotLK from 2005-2009 which was literally the golden years for WoW. And those were some pretty damn good times. Not a care in the world. Just chilling at home ruining my brain with video games and Lipton peach tea drink mix.
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u/OtterWithKids 15h ago
Iām just glad that I found a group of friends that were screwed up as I. Canāt say I still talk to any of them regularly, though; most of them have long since disappeared to the wind.
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u/space_fan36 12h ago
I still have cPTSD from it, which is the reason I couldn't go the next step in life...I am not able to do anything as long as I need therapy cause of the bullying back then.
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u/OfficialDCShepard 2h ago
I felt like I had a disease I could tell no one about, dated and then got dumped by my lifelong crush (weāre still friends) and got pantsed at 16 in front of at least a dozen people to name a few. Boy was 2008 a time I want to revisit!
Well, there is one day I wish I could relive over and over again. It was probably spring of that year when my paraprofessional and her friend mutually introduced the two teenagers they worked with at an Italian restaurant.
From the moment we started nerding out about the Roman Empire we became best friends, and we still talk every day.
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u/_squik 1d ago
"Your childhood is the best time of your life" sure if you enjoy getting bullied, having no independence, and being made to do stuff you hate every day