As far back as I can remember, I've always been odd. Clearly, I gave the impression that I was simultaneously very smart and next to the plate. When I lived in Nantes and I was still in school, it did not show too much. I took great care to observe and imitate others, to know how to conduct myself in society and avoid mistakes.

Things started to go wrong in college. There, it was necessary to speak in group: finished the collective games, hopscotch, marbles and elastic, in which to merge not to attract the attention. Rites of seduction were set up between girls and boys. I also had to follow the fashion to be accepted. I started to feel excluded from these "social dances", unable to understand what was going on.

I had the impression that everyone had grown up at once and that I alone had been stuck at an infantile stage.

A deep sense of shift

Brilliant student, I wondered how I could have such good grades while feeling completely out of the class, for the most basic things. Thus, I am incredibly naive because I decode only the explicit. Not the innuendo, allusions, "private jokes" nor the second degree.

For example, one day, "girlfriends" assured me that the nice kid in the corner was in love with me. Confident, I ran to find him to propose that we go out together. Obviously, the boy, who was unaware of my existence, pushed me away while I insisted. Another would have immediately seized the joke.

I was learning life by trial and error, in pain.

My problem is that I kept all my questions for myself. And over time, I have somatized by all my pores. I was scratching my blood, I had repeated colds, pneumonia ... After starting and dropping several courses of study, overwhelmed each time by inexplicable fatigue, I landed at Euromed, a business school, Marseille.

In my promotion, there were only twenty, and yet I struggled to create a link. Typical behavior: another student invites me to "lunch at home", and I come home with my sandwich. She should have told me that I did not have to bring my meal. You can imagine the sum of misunderstandings and dumbfounded looks I faced every day.

"There is something wrong with you"

Then I met a boy, and noted with joy that my social difficulties did not prevent me from living a romantic relationship. But one day, while driving to Brest with his friends, I had a huge anxiety attack. I was crying, I was shaking, I was choking, I was hot, then cold ... to the point of forcing us to turn back.

On the phone, my mother said to me, "Julie, one day you'll have to see a psychiatrist, there's something wrong with you." She was right.

It is not normal for me to be able to talk to only one person at a time, and only in a known environment.

You must have the feeling of interviewing a girl no stranger than average, but you do not imagine the exhausting intellectual process that it requires internally.

I look good because we are in pairs, just you and me, and we are talking about a subject that I master. It is not always the same.

The difficulty of integrating the professional world

Once my master's degree in my pocket, I found an internship in a Parisian recruitment firm. I imagine that working ten hours a day to solicit candidates is enough to be appreciated. Well, no, you also have to be friendly, popular, and have lunch with your colleagues. But I always decline their invitations, to be finally alone during the lunch break. Even around the coffee machine, I am unable to speak with several people at once.

Result: I inherit a reputation as haughty, snobbish, lonely ... To the point that I am convened by my boss. I do not understand what is reproached to me, and after five months, under sedatives, I resign.

After six months of unemployment, I landed my first job in a real estate development company. Having learned from the past, I establish a lot of relationships with my colleagues. But that's not enough. Besides my lack of friendliness, I am also reproached for my look, too junior: I did not understand the codes of the box and I'm not feminine enough. I then integrate the real estate agency headed by my father. And at the same time, I met a boy, via a dating site. I do not see how I could have had a relationship with a man otherwise.

But it's not simple: if I do not have my ten hours of sleep, I can not even leave home the next day ... That's why I always read separately, which vexes my new companion, just like the first. The typical life of young couples without children - happy hours with friends in bars, late at night after work - is exhausting.

As a tourist in a foreign country, I am so tired of the efforts I have to make to follow conversations.

In the hubbub and the music, that I do not loose the lips. Too much information, exchanged too quickly for me. Each time, my brain "freezes".

And yet, I have secret strategies of survival: ready-made stocks of ready-made stitches to others to put a little fluidity in my exchanges. I also learned to respond by rephrasing, "Are you all right?" "Yes, I'm fine." With a bit of "Ah" and "Oh", to give a semblance of
spontaneity in the blah. The friends of my boyfriend, not fooled, take me for a crazy. One Sunday, I collapse in the bathroom. My body lets go: a kind of "burn out".

When the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome falls

Googlant my symptoms, I come across the testimony of a woman who describes Asperger's syndrome, a variety of autism. I recognize myself in what she explains, but I say to myself: "No, it is not possible, not me." I have in mind all the clichés about autism: from the child who screams while banging his head against the walls to the scholar played by Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man".

But in February 2013, after several days of testing in a specialized center, I am officially diagnosed "Asperger". If I had not been to "aspie girls" forums - as we call each other - I do not know if I would be in this world again.

I feel so much apart, misunderstood, exhausted, that I have often wanted to finish.

Everything lights up. Asperger's autism is a pervasive developmental disorder of genetic origin. I am not psychotic but different.

Dr. Tony Attwood, a British expert working in Australia, says that for an hour of interaction, the Asperger's autistic needs an hour of rest. So I was strong to have spent so much effort, for twenty-seven years, to insert myself in a society to which I am not at all adapted, to have even obtained a master.

The beginning of a new life

A new life begins. I leave my companion. I have not been in love for quite some time, but yes, I have been.

Aspie girls are not "fridges" lined with sociopaths.

On the contrary, one can be "bac-10" in sentimental relationships, but feel the emotions very intensely. What sins is the ability to express them at the right time. In fact, one is a bit like isolated Macintosh computers in a world of PC, under Windows. (Laughter.)

Living alone again, with three dogs and two cats, is pure happiness. I do what I want, I sleep without forcing myself to watch, hoping to look sociable. I've opened a blog dedicated to Asperger's Syndrome for women *, and it's great, because many women in pain are contacting me. I started a doctoral thesis on the subject, and I am asked to intervene in conferences.

In short, I am reborn, and today, I am at peace with myself.