My lifetime of social exclusion began with a game of tag at school. I must have been about five.
A girl in the playground asked me if I wanted to join in with her and her friends. I was sitting by myself, quite happily, so I said: ‘No, I’m okay.’
In my mind, this was a non-issue. After years of not being asked, I was glad she asked me to join in, but the simple truth was that I didn’t want to play.
Clearly, I was wrong. She took my response as a shun, and from then on enlisted her two brothers to join in picking on me – name-calling and teasing, with ‘spastic’ being the word of choice. Before long, several other pupils joined in and the few friendships I’d managed to form became strained, too.
It set the pattern for the rest of my life, one I’m only beginning to unpick now, four decades later.
Although I’d just started school when the ‘tag’ incident happened, I was already used to not having many friends. I just didn’t ‘get it’ when it came to other children: not understanding social cues and struggling to join in with games and normal kids’ chit-chat.
I never knew what to say, when to say it and when to shut up. Never grasped what shoe went on what foot. I had a violent, unfathomable aversion to the cream on the top of my break-time bottle of milk. The list was vast and baffling.
Nowadays, of course, there would be red flags everywhere. Teachers, health professionals – most parents – would instantly recognise these as the signs of an autistic child, struggling.
I just didn’t ‘get it’ when it came to other children: not understanding social cues and struggling to join in with games and normal kids’ chit-chat, writes Amanda Nicholson
Now, aged 45, Amanda has realised that being autistic has impacted her ability to make friends
But this was 1985 and the world was different, making being different very difficult.
It was only this year, aged 45, that I discovered I’m autistic. While it’s made me see that being bullied wasn’t my fault, scars remain. Forty years of being labelled ‘weird’ or a ‘freak’ or ‘broken’ cannot be forgotten overnight.
Although that game of tag is my first memory of being excluded, apparently I was singled out as odd from the start.
At nursery, the other toddlers refused to let me play in the Wendy house with them. It got to the stage where my mum had to drag me, screaming, to nursery each morning.
Changing nurseries didn’t help. I still struggled to make friends and here the teachers took my biscuits away when I refused to drink my milk. Many people on the autistic spectrum are very sensitive to the textures of food, and I couldn’t bear that cream on my tongue – I still can’t.
Then there was the issue with my shoes. Rather than explain ‘left and right’ in a way that I could understand, Mum would make me walk home with no shoes on. Her unsympathetic, pragmatic approach to her ‘problem’ child chimes with me, too.
Several family members have now been diagnosed with autism – the genetic link is well established – I suspect she might have also been autistic. With my parents, as with my friends, I tried to act in a mysterious ‘right’ way to please them. But nothing worked. Anything I did or said out of the ordinary was me misbehaving. Even today, I prefer to stay quiet for risk of ‘getting it wrong’.
Every day there was a new puzzle for me to try to work out, a new way for my bullies to torment me.
Social cues – ‘reading the room’ – something neurotypical children learn to pick up on, were lost on me.
I remember one time, aged about nine, when I was working on a group project with six other children and the subject of ghosts came up. I said I believed in them, which prompted further questions.
I was so pleased that everyone seemed interested in what I had to say, I didn’t realise they were teasing me. I carried on, making stuff up, digging myself in deeper and deeper, until everyone was laughing at me. The ‘weirdo’ was at it again.
I could never get it right. I dropped out of school aged 15, convinced I was to blame.
After school, I drifted between a series of mind-numbing dead-end jobs such as working in warehouses and cleaning. Workplace camaraderie and banter always eluded me.
Again, I became the quiet ‘weird’ one. Yet I didn’t give up. Ten years ago, I joined a dating website – which felt a lot less daunting than going on nights out to meet potential partners. And it was here that I met my husband: neurodivergent, like me – although I didn’t know it at the time and didn’t know I was autistic, either – we connected immediately.
Here was someone entirely on my wavelength, although my husband and I agree that we get on well not just because we’re both neurodivergent, but because he’s outgoing and I’m more of an introvert.
Having someone who understands me has been incredible. I’ve only recently managed to open up to him about the childhood bullying in more detail, but he’s supportive.
I went back into education in my 30s, choosing the Open University because the idea of studying in person with other people was too much, and did a Creative Writing MA.
The experience was much better than school and I tentatively keep up with some course-mates on Facebook.
Discovering I was autistic this year was a revelation. It prompted me to start dealing with my past experiences and to work on accepting myself.
Knowing doesn’t change the past, but it helps me to make sense of it, and realise I wasn’t just ‘weird’. That’s not to say the scars of my treatment don’t still sting to this day.
Yes, I’m different. But I am also me. Finally I realise that’s not a bad thing.