I want you to take a moment to look back on your teenage years.

Yes, really. Come on, it can’t be that bad.

Well, for most of us, it’s a mad rush as we’re juggling new social demands, trying to meet challenges in school, making choices for the future, all while trying to figure out who we are and where we fit in.

Everybody got lost at some point, in some way or another, right?

Well, imagine what it might be like for someone with Aspergers Syndrome. This is a high-functioning form of autism spectrum disorder, without any intellectual disability or delay in language development.

It’s characterised by delayed social maturity and social reasoning; an unusual profile of learning abilities; difficulties with communication and control of emotions; intense and highly specific interests; sensory overload and a handful of other common issues.

What this actually means is that everyday social interactions that most people find easy and enjoyable can be difficult and exhausting; it can be hard to fit in and make friends; isolation and bullying can be issues, as can falling short of academic potential – and there’s a heightened vulnerability to anxiety and depression.

I was one of these kids, and maybe you know someone like this as well. We don’t have exact figures, but best estimates are that 1 out of 160 people are affected by some form of autism spectrum disorder. As of 2007, that’s 125,000 people in Australia, or half a million families.

Now, have you ever tried to do something that didn’t come naturally to you? It makes you feel pretty dumb, right?

When I was a kid, I knew that things like starting and holding a conversation, making friends, managing the impressions that I gave off – these things were difficult. And this knowledge, which was reinforced by the diagnosis of Aspergers became a belief that these things were impossible. Things like authentic friendships and belonging would be forever beyond my capabilities.

The Aspergers label really became who I was, and there’s a whole subculture built around this label. You get some kids who identify with skate culture, goth culture, maybe immerse themselves in the geek or otaku world. Well, I was an Aspie. And like all subcultures, we had a word to refer to the outgroup.

Neurotypicals. That’s what we called them. It’s horrible, isn’t it? This is intended to avoid saying “normal”, because that would of course imply abnormality for a group who’ve felt different quite often for their entire lives. But I find it’s attached to a victim identity, an us-versus-them-mentality, and only throws up additional emotional barriers to connecting with people.

This was something that stayed with me until I was about fourteen or so. I began to notice a few things around then. First, that people aren’t quite as mean-spirited as I had convinced myself that they were (or maybe they’d just matured a little by then, who knows?); I was not satisfied with the future that the Aspergers identity seemed to be prescribing – I wanted more and better relationships than the ones that were available to me, and; I began to feel that Aspergers wasn’t the whole story, or even the main one. I may not be able to choose what comes easily to me, but that doesn’t have to dictate how I choose to act. Aspergers itself is a diagnosis based on behavioural observations, so if I choose to behave differently, what happens?

I also began to notice some other things around this age that proved to be very powerful motivators for learning all the things that Aspergers made difficult. No prizes for guessing what they were.

So, I decided I wanted a different story for my life. I settled on an ideal and fought hard against myself to make it happen. So how’d that turn out?

Well, by the time I’d finished high school, I’d made a great circle of friends, taken off intellectually and smashed all academic expectations…

…and even took a few shaky steps forward in a little romantic relationship…

…which promptly fell flat on its face when my family moved to Tasmania.

Now, you may be wondering, during all of this, what kind of support was available to a kid with Aspergers?When I went through school, support was very much in its infancy. My high school was the very first in the country to have autism support in the form of an autism support class, and I was in the first group of students to go through that.