Asberger syndrome is sometimes referred to as Wrong Planet Syndrome, which is a description that makes a lot of sense to me. You can see it in book titles like Raising Martians and Through the Eyes of Aliens, a website like Wrong Planet, and different other internet forums. Many have described feeling uncomfortable when they spend time with people, while others feel that they were born in the wrong time period, or in the wrong city. In other words, they have to seek out their planet.
I can relate to that experience, but the theory of multiverses is just as relevant to me. I think of it as multiple bubbles where each bubble is a different universe or reality. I entered my teens in 1981, so I definitely spent my adolescence and early adulthood in a pre-internet era. I was still very much aware of what kids in other countries were doing, and as attached as I have always been to my home town (and reluctant to leave it), I always felt that I was in the wrong place. I was fascinated by goth and cosplay from 1980’s. I have been drawn towards science fiction and space since I watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos in 1980. Watching films like ET and Back to the Future sparked an interest in BMX bikes and skateboards. The problem was that none of this came to my country. That happened much later. That may surprise people today because American popculture is very popular here, and conventions have been around over there since the late 1930’s.
I have written extensively about adapting. I’m not talking about assimilation, about becoming an earthling, and thus wipe out everything that makes us unique, but a certain amount of it may be practical. After all, we’re not going to live on Vulcan or Alderaan, are we? We have to find happiness here on Earth. To do that I think it’s necessary to stop worrying about what other people think about us. That requires confidence and knowing who you are. If it was easy I’d be a master myself, but I’m not. Our mission should be to try our best and to raise children that do it better. I wanted to find my planet when I was in my teens. My kind of people were out there somewhere, probably at Star Trek and Star Wars conventions and goth festivals in Britain and the USA, but I never found them.
The feeling of not being at home may go back to childhood. My surroundings had other (not necessarily bigger) expectations to me than I could live up to. I couldn’t be what people wanted me to be. I always tried to be a good earthling, but I didn’t do things right. It took a while, but I eventually found my family. I still have some lingering reflections, though.
I think of it as bubbles or parallel universes where different versions of me experienced other things. In one universe I may have come in contact with people from my planet much sooner than I did, and I wonder how that would have affected the things that came later. I had my first job in Stavanger, and although we experienced some racism there, we loved our life in the old section of the city. We moved back to my hometown Haugesund when I lost my job, and four years later we had to move again. We lived four years in West-Telemark, two years in Nordland county, and another four year period in Haugesund. We moved back to Telemark at the end of last year. We haven’t moved around because we wanted to, but because that’s what I had to do to get a job.
We have met many vermin on our journey, but also a few people we miss. I had a friend in college, a colleague in Telemark we also rented a house from, a neighbour in Halsa, Nordland, and a family we got to know in church there. These places turned out to be horrible because people there hated outsiders, but the few good people made life better. Bubbles are fragile and tend to break, but I sometimes think of what would have happened if it had been possible to stay.
It’s hard creating a new bubble, and I don’t do it unless I have to, but I have managed to get something positive out of all of them. It is still a challenge, because no matter how much people claim to have created a society where being different isn’t just possible, but encouraged, the reality is very different. People make everything their business. Norway is a country with a strong norm everyone is expexted to stay within, and you are constantly remined that that’s not how things are done here. The tiny house trend is a good illustration, because in theory you can buy one of these homes, but the moment you decide to move in, you’d face a mountain of regulations you couldn’t possible meet. It would be like dealing with Earth and Vogon bureaucracy at the same time (reference to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
I don’t stretch the alien identification as far as some people, but it makes sense to me. People who see the world with different eyes, also see and experience different things. We see interesting things, and if we are courageous, we can become something no one can see in us. That’s the tricky part. That’s what we need confidence for in a world that doesn’t allow for much leeway, or deviation from the norm. Some like to think of themselves as aliens, while others prefer to see themselves as outside the box-kind of people. The point is that life outside mainstream can be quite interesting, and frequently more sustainable.
It has puzzled many people why dystopic stories have dominated young adult fiction for at least a couple of decades. It is disturbing in a way, because if people think there is no escape, they could stop trying. There’s another possibility. They could be seeking likeminded people in the other districts (as in the Hunger Games). In that sense, dystopia could be something positive. It could be the start of the alien invasion.
I am more 