Please read the Introduction first!

I just started writing a bit about something unofficially referred to as the “Wrong Planet Syndrome”. It’s called wrong planet because autistic kids who go undiagnosed grow up thinking that everybody else is so different from themselves, that they must have been born on the wrong planet. I was born a bit too early to be thinking about planets other than this one.

I’m sure the whole concept is probably nearly impossible for a non-autistic person to wrap their mind around. Especially consider how well some of learn to mask our autistic traits. We can get pretty good at this masking thing, so that we might “fit in” a little more unobtrusively than we would if we allowed ourselves to behave in a manner that’s normal & comfortable for us. It doesn’t happen easily, and it takes years of observation, practice, work, and fear of being found out. Even us old farts worry about being discovered. I can’t say for sure about anyone else, but I still mask around people who already know I’m autistic. This is because I know some of my more overt traits would stand out as “odd”, and make me embarrassed as hell. That, and the fear that somebody might ask “What are you doing??”. The embarrassment alone would cause such flop sweat that I would almost run, not walk, away.