Clues in childhood photos

[Dee317]

Yeah, I've been cutting my own hair for over 20 years but it's mostly because I don't feel I can explain to people what I want, can get better results myself, and I'm too cheap to pay someone to do it to a substandard quality. That and I hate having to make conversation with a stranger and look in the mirror with them.m

I am also extremely cheap. **thrift shop high five**

 

[laurag9g9g9]

High five!

 

[Dee317]

There are many photos of me with fake smiles, and a few from early childhood where I was stimming, before I even knew what that was. We had some blankets with the satin edges, and when I'd curl up in them I'd instinctively hold it to my face to feel and smell the fibers, or I'd roll the edge in my fingers back and forth to feel that little big of friction on the inside. It was very calming. We called it "sniffs and picks". I still do it whenever I find myself wrapped up in a blanket. But in all the pictures I'm doing this my eyes are huge, totally zoned out lost in what I'm doing.

I such my thumb still, so I know exactly the feeling you get. That ugly pillow I'm cuddling with had that smell, the one that could knock my knees out from under me, make my eyes roll into the back of my head, and send my body into a comfortable numb. I still believe this is why I don't have the need to do drugs in a world where no one else seems to have self control not to. It's sound discriptivly simular to heroin addicts. Now I must sleep with a blanket touching my face, while I have my thumb. I have summer insomnia for the simple lack of heavier blankets and the noise from the fans or AC.

 

[Myrtonos]

I also hated my hair brushed when I was a kid I use to walk around with knotty hair and hated when my mum brushed my hair,...

Is it credible that you would walk like that, being an aspie that breaks the mould, with that beauty interest?

 

[Adora]

Is it credible that you would walk like that, being an aspie that breaks the mould, with that beauty interest?

I didn't fully start paying attention to myself until around the age of 13,my makeup interest has been there for years but unfortunately when it came to my hair I didn't start fully taking care of it until people were saying how knotty and oily it was I also started fully experementing with makeup in my teens aswell.

 

[Astroganga]

I'm the girl on the far left with the geometric jumper you can't tell much from the picture as it is a bit shiny but I look like I am miles away and am kind of staring.

 

[Coupe]

First I just want to say I really like everyone's photos!

I'm afraid that I don't have any photos of me as a little kid to upload here (not stored in my computer anyway), but when I do go thru old photos of myself, two things that stand out to me....the first is the fact that whenever I'm being photographed, I'm either looking off to the side or have my eyes closed, and my smile is usually very strained or looks forced. The second thing is that in most photographs, I usually have one or two stuffed animals with me, or some other object. In the photos where I have a stuffed animal with me, I appear withdrawn from everyone and everything else in the photo and it looks as if I'm "talking" to the stuffed animal (something I've done all my life and continue to do as an adult ...it feels like I'm alone most of the time, so what am I supposed to do?).

It's the video footage that my favorite aunt took of me during my toddler/preschool years that I feel are the most "telling," tho...during a tape filmed on Christmas Eve when I was about 4, I'm fascinated with my father's wristwatch that glowed in the dark when you pushed a button. I also ask over and over again about opening "just one present" on Christmas Eve (what some neurotypicals refer to as "perseverating"), and then while I'm in the kitchen eating lunch, my mother begins singing as practice for a choral performance later that night. My mother's singing happened to be a sensory "no no" for me at that age, and I turned around and said, "Mom, STOP!" My mom replies with, "Baby!Coupe, just never mind!" I retort, "I'm MINDING!" And then my mom says, "Well, just go in the living room if you mind!" (I'm actually known as "the good one" in my family, and when my siblings and I watched that video a couple years ago, they found it quite hilarious that I used to "talk back" to our mother that way. XD)

In some video footage from when I would have been about nine years old, I actually seem kind of depressed and withdrawn. The only person I give consistent eye contact to is my aunt (who is filming) and I carry a toy of Randall from "Monsters Inc" everywhere with me, the way I did with stuffed animals in earlier photos/videos. I can't watch that particular video without alternately wanting to gather my younger self in my arms and rock her gently, and feeling a twinge of outrage that the emergent depression I was showing wasn't noticed sooner.