Diagnosed: Different

Hi, I’m Francesco. And if I were growing up today, I’d probably have a neat little label slapped onto me: autistic, ADHD, “neurodivergent.” Something official-sounding. Something that would have followed me around like an unremovable sticker, defining me before I even had the chance to define myself.

But back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, they just called me… weird.

The Start of My Obsession

Let’s rewind to 1988. I was seven years old when I got my first personal computer. It was an Olivetti PC86, running DOS 3.30 — a world where black screens and blinking white cursors held more magic for me than any playground ever could.

I had convinced my mum to get it for me, and she did the rest of the job convincing my dad. Then my dad set it up, thinking it was just a fancy typewriter, a useful tool to distract me from school. He had no idea what he had unleashed.

From the moment I powered it on, I was hooked. Not just on playing games—though trust me, I spent plenty of time on Space Invaders 👾, Pac-Man🟡, and Tetris 🧱 — but on something even more exciting: GW-BASIC 🧑‍💻

At first, it was just me typing random commands, watching the screen respond, feeling like some kind of digital wizard. Then, I started figuring out how to make the computer do what I wanted. No one told me to. No one showed me how. It was just me, a manual I could barely understand, and a whole lot of trial and error.

I would sit there for hours, trying to make the machine think, to make it draw a stupid triangle or loop a piece of text endlessly. Every time I got it to work, I felt a rush that no human conversation ever gave me.

But not everyone found my passion charming.

"Why Don’t You Go Outside?"

My dad? He could not stand it.

"Stop wasting time on that thing. Go study!" he’d say, peering over my shoulder as if I were committing some unspeakable act. I still remember that day when i opened up the old modem and disconnect the speaker cable so I could dial in and jump on the Internet at night without my parents hearing. It was 1994.

By the way study what? I was learning more by messing around with GW-BASIC than I ever did in school. Who needed algebra when I could write a program to solve equations for me? Who needed to memorize facts when I could make a computer store them? (Okay, turns out I did need algebra and memorization, but that’s a different story.)

In my dad’s world, computers were for playing, and absolutely not something to waste time on during my "growing phase."

So, naturally, my obsession with it? Not serious. Just a distraction.

And then there was the whole “having no friends” issue.

"Why Are You So Quiet?"

Here’s the thing: I could talk. I just didn’t see the point of talking for the sake of it. My sister? Total opposite. She could walk into a room full of strangers and leave with ten new friends. She needed people. I didn’t. That difference confused my parents—and pretty much every relative around me.

"Why don’t you go outside and play?"
"Why don’t you talk more?"
"Why don’t you make friends?"

Because… I didn’t want to?

I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t lonely. I was just interested in things other kids weren’t. While they were outside kicking a ball, I was inside debugging a piece of code I barely understood. And I liked it that way.

But to the world around me, my silence wasn’t a choice. It was a problem.

Would I Be Diagnosed Today? Probably.

If I were growing up now, someone would have probably said:

"Oh, he has trouble with social interactions." "He hyper-focuses on a single topic." "He doesn’t engage in small talk."

BAM. Autistic. ADHD. Something. Maybe both. Maybe a whole cocktail of labels. And that would have changed everything. Because once you have a diagnosis, it’s not just who you are anymore. It’s a thing that needs to be managed.

I would have been sent to therapy. A speech therapist, a psychologist, maybe even given meds to “help” me. And maybe, over time, I would have started believing that there was something wrong with me. That my natural way of being was an error to be corrected.

And that’s what frustrates me.

Because here’s the truth: I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t missing anything. I was just a kid who loved computers more than people, and I was perfectly fine with that.

Normal Is Just a Majority Vote

People love to define what’s “normal.” But normal isn’t objective. It’s just whatever the majority happens to be doing. If most people like parties, socializing, and making small talk, then that’s “normal.” If you don’t, you’re “different.”

And when you’re different, people assume there must be an explanation. A reason. A disorder.

But what if there’s nothing wrong?

What if some people just work differently? What if some of us don’t talk much because, crazy thought, we don’t feel like it?

I know now that I never needed fixing. And if you’re like me, if you’d rather script than socialize, if you thrive in front of a screen rather than in a crowded room, then you probably don’t need fixing either.

You’re just wired differently. And that’s perfectly fine.