
Define 'alien', if you would?
Mine, from an attempt at explaining it in a comment from previous previous post:
The behaviors of the people who surrounded me generally made no sense, for most of my life. I was missing the nonverbal portion of communication, and most of the apparently 'obvious' things that most people pick up on.
So, being surrounded by beings whose behavior made no sense, and who mostly had _NO_ idea why I was so very confused, when my confusion made perfect sense to me, made me decide at a very young age that I wasn't actually human, and ended up on the wrong planet (this was probably after I started reading science fiction). Especially since them not understanding why I was confused tended to mean that most people didn't try to explain anything to me.
Most of my life, I spent people-watching, in an attempt to understand what the _hell_ was going on. Anthropological studies, if I had only known it at the time. That helped, some, but people with good skills in such taking the time to try to explain body language and tone and such - so I had a basis from which to try to start to understand such things - made the biggest difference.
In other words, I had to be taught how to speak the most prevalent language of human beings, because I did _not_ pick it up on my own. Ok, I got more than nothing; really dramatic stuff got through. But I never understood why people were so upset with me for not understanding what was going on before then.
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I note that being different from others is _NOT_ what I mean by alien.
I mean... not being able to comprehend why other people do what they do, for most of my life. _All_ other people, and at least until I started collecting enough data to see patterns, pretty much all non-basic needs behaviors. Family, friends, no one made sense. Some were just kind/aware enough to try to explain things to me. That information - combined with those who tried to explain body language and such - helped with my anthropological attempts.
I mean having (figuratively) beat my head against walls and acted like an anthropologist in order to try to figure things out. I mean having made the poor choice of trying to pretend to be like the other humans, in order to possibly get a better idea of what the hell was going on (not that it worked, but it did mean I still find bits of that remaining in my psyche to pick out again).
It's not 'feeling different'. It's 'you people don't make _SENSE_, this can't really be where I'm from!'.
Not that I have any idea if this is going to be something that is explainable to someone who hasn't experienced it, now that I think about it...