"When you see something like that it just clicks. You know it. It's Asperger's Syndrome."

For some reason, I had agreed to go to a summer holidays sports activities club. I must have been mad. I knew that I didn't like sports, that sports and me didn't mix. Yet I went anyway. I liked horse riding even if I was no good at it, I thought, and I wanted to go because of that. Maybe I would make friends.


My ten year old self didn't know very much about me and my difficulties, yet. I knew things went wrong, and I blamed myself for them sometimes but managed to pick myself right up. How silly of me, what a mistake. I suppose my attitude was in ways good: I can do this, I thought right until the last moment. But was I setting myself up for a fall?


I can't remember it so clearly. I need to ask somebody else to tell me what happened. It was alright. The horse-riding came first, and we were only led around because we were "beginners". I didn't speak to anybody.


Why? I wish I remembered. Was I afraid? Did I not know what to say? Did I just prefer being alone? I expect so.


Remembering things like this is like watching a small movie. Me as a smaller child, me standing in the corner. I had been told to stand in the corner a lot as a small child. It became automatic and I was convinced that I had to stand in the corner when I was doing something wrong.


Thankfully I have got over that now. Standing in the corner is silly.


The hallway was overwhelming. I didn't know anybody and it was so unfamiliar. All I knew was the bright lights, the echoing of people's voices as they shouted and the screeching of their trainers on the ground. I don't know what to do. I don't know anyone. They're all so competitive and I suddenly doubt my ability to do anything. I doubt my ability to even so much as exist.


So I don't.


A ten year old girl, tall but skinny, standing in the corner and backing away from everything else. Hunched into herself and arms folded, shutting off. Who said she was on this planet?


I don't really remember it, but my Mum describes it to me today. "When you see something like that it just clicks. You know it. It's Asperger's Syndrome."


Of course that's not what it's all about. It's just one drop of a thousand little droplets of rain, and of course everybody gets different ones.