u/chicken8277

I live in a part of the UK where it only snows a couple of times a year, but I can always smell when it's about to start, it's like petrichor (the smell after it rains on bare soil) but more sweet and "light"? does anyone relate because I've just told my family and they just looked at me weirdly haha.

This smell also always seems to be paired with the intense purple clouds. I just remember driving to school in the morning and the sky is purple and white and this smell is in the air.

Snow also has a specific taste to me, it's hard to describe since it's August obviously, but it doesn't taste like plain water (and i haven't been eating dirty snow lol)

This is a long read, so don't feel like you have to read it if you can't be bothered! There is a TL;DR at the bottom

I come from a fairly wealthy family background in the UK. For those unfamiliar with the British school system, we have the state and private system.

Because of our entrenched class system, whichever one you are in (plus your family background and upbringing) basically decide what the rest of your life looks like.

Most people who go through the private school system (~7-8% of pupils nationally), go into jobs such as finance, politics, business management, etc.

I am 21M, diagnosed aged 18. Until Year 6 (age 11) I went to the local state primary school. I don't really remember that much about it now, but I always used to play with the quieter girls, all my reports said I was super quiet, and I was generally not troublesome to the teachers. My class had ~30 students in it, so the teachers were always dealing with the loud disruptive ones.

Eventually the girls started bullying me. But I had my best friend (who was a girl too) and we used to play pretend games every break time. I know autistic people don't generally do this, but we always played the same game with little variation, and were pretty invested in it too.

Then in year 7 (age 12) I went to a big private school. My parents probably subconsciously wanted to start pushing me towards the higher rungs of the social ladder. I know this sounds pretty toxic, but sadly it's how life works in the UK. We've had this system since the Victorian era and it's often said that class divides are more stark than racial divides here. But they also wanted to give me a smaller class environment that was quieter, because the teachers were just not even registering me at my primary school.

I was really happy there. I found a best friend who I played trains with every day, mapping routes around the playground. I excelled at my academics, I was loved by the teachers, and I was generally pretty confident, as I also eventually developed a group of about 8 other boys who I didn't spend time with every day, but they were my friends. As many of you probably know, a group like this protects us from anyone who doesn't like us, as one guy in that group told his friend off for picking on me for example.

More new people joined the school as we got older, but I don't ever remember being particularly close to the new people. I kind of stuck to my group and particularly my best friend. I took all my subjects very seriously and genuinely did my best, I think at this point academics were kind of my special interest. I've heard some autistic men saying they never liked creative subjects, but I enjoyed them just as much as science and maths.

Then I moved schools again in Year 10 (age 14) and it all went downhill. Suddenly I didn't have my group or my best friend, many of the other boys at my new school already knew each other, and I was just on my own I guess.

I remember getting so upset when people started learning to swear, as it was just wrong in my head. I would always arrive at every lesson early. I loved following the textbook exactly and would copy bits from it the teacher missed after the lesson. I was unable to do an "average" homework, as I needed every piece of information to be on it. I got distressed if the teacher jumped around the textbook, didn't teach from it (as I then didn't know what curriculum points I needed), or used two textbooks, as I had to copy information from both.

The teachers loved me. In the UK, I don't believe it is mandatory for teachers at private schools to have training in neurodivergence, so they just thought I was quirky, quiet and disciplined. They did not see the absolute indifference people in my class treated me with, as I was completely outside their social networks. Back then, I wasn't even aware that for most NT students, school is a social club and the work is the necessary evil.

I loved remote learning during the pandemic, and the routine of it, and the fact I didn't need to talk to anyone.

I think after Covid was when the actual mental damage started, as I got older, suddenly I wasn't treated with indifference. People in my class were fine, but random people from other year groups would greet me sarcastically, presumably getting entertainment from the fact that I'd reply with a script instead of a confrontation. I began getting paranoid and long story short by the end of school, I skipped lunch because I didn't like being perceived. I'd get laughed at quietly. It was never full on bullying, but because I was on my own I had no defence.

I was diagnosed coincidentally after speaking to a counsellor my mum booked. She immediately picked up on the signs and told my mum.

Some of my teachers read about it, saying they had no idea what i'd been going through. Nothing improved at school though. I think back then I didn't really understand what being autistic meant either.

So I went into university as normal, pretending that everything was fine, and that I was just socially stunted. I guess back then I could ignore my autism because my social anxiety was so bad, but I didn't realise it was the baseline underneath.

I'm doing an intense Stem course, and I won't write all the details, but I experience bad executive dysfunction, just daily life is a full time job, let alone my studies. I've had two periods of suspected burnout, and I hate the open-plan buildings on campus. I get stressed if I can't find a quiet lunch spot, and often have to go home halfway through the day. I like my flatmates, but it's really tough being perceived all the time by them, and in first year I skipped the canteen if I was going in there on my own because I didn't like being perceived. The irregular timetabling is super draining because I might have a lecture at 9am, 11am, 3pm and 5pm, and random hours in between, followed by a whole lab day the next day.

I'm only just properly learning about my condition now. For example, I never really realised I have sensory issues until I went to the cinema the other day, enjoyed the film, but felt like I had cotton wool stuffed in my head afterwards. Or if I go shopping, I get a bit overwhelmed without knowing why, and now I know why. Does anyone relate to tolerance for the world dropping as you realise you don't have to put up with it? Like for example I got some noise cancelling headphones, and now couldn't go shopping without them, and sometimes I deliberately forget my glasses so everything except close up stuff is blurry.

You can have a financial safety net, and it does genuinely help as I don't have to make decisions such as keeping working an exhausting job if I'm struggling with it, and I am grateful for that. But it can't buy a neurotypical nervous system. One thing I am grateful for is that as a ND person I was never sucked in to the same social pressures as people from school, so I am able to see through a lot of upper middle-class social posturing and politics, which helps me to be more principled.

Meanwhile, I get frustrated because I just cannot explain it to my family. They think it's dramatic that I call myself disabled, and get frustrated when I need boundaries like not doing spontaneous stuff too much, or when I try to explain sensory overload. It's a pretty lonely place to be at times.

Apart from the unique class system for a developed country, the UK also runs on a kind of "spontaneous chaos" which is a nightmare for people with autism. People are extremely indirect, there is a massive cultural focus on saving face and high context communication, and time is often treated as a fluid thing. An example is that directness is often treated as aggression, or "I'm sure it's my fault" means "it's your fault", etc

TL;DR: 21M, late diagnosed. gifted and quiet child at school, developed social anxiety, and now struggle to function as an adult, but just starting to learn about my condition.