I'm Matt, I live in Hawaii. I'm a 32 year old full time college freshman and former member of the USAF (honorably discharged). I think I have Asperger's but don't know. I am (getting) divorced.
Why I'm here: As above, I think I have Asperger's.
As a small child I had a lot of red flags for autism-like behavior. I didn't speak for a long time (I was eventually put in a speech therapy class), I made no real effort to associate with others, I had to be taught to smile when I meet people, I don't like to make eye contact (there's a sort of anxiety that creeps up on me and makes the muscles in my neck tense, which makes me angry so I feel like I don't want people looking me in the eye because I don't want them to think I want to kill them even though that's kind of how I feel. but that might be a social anxiety issue).
I didn't have external meltdowns, I just bottled everything up until I started displaying sociopathic behavior in my teens. I spent that entire decade angry, I felt like I always had an immediate grasp of what was going on and was waiting until everyone else caught up. My jokes were hilarious to me but no one else really got them. I needed solid reasoning for every request made of me and my mother and I warred over every chore and homework assignment. I was and am about as content spending time with small groups of people as I am sitting alone and thinking (except when I'm limerent and then I'm desperate for the Object's company). I have this astounding recall for comic book character origins and plot lines as well as 80s movies (I also had a "dinosaur" phase) and a pretty decent memory for everything else.
I hate crowds, shrieking babies and other loud repetitive noises, to this day I still make those counter noises, like low tones or whistling a single note to drown out background noise. If I'm alone in a crowd though I can sort of just tune everything out and even enjoy myself if there's somewhere to drink or dance.
Over the 29 years since I started school I've learned how to fake my way through most social interactions, I feel like I'm faking it anyway, constantly studying people for clues about what they feel or think. I'm really good at it now and can often times guess the exact vocab word someone will use to complete a thought (or I'm guiding the conversation such that they'll use the one I'm thinking of, I can't really tell).
I've seen movies with Aspie characters, I've met a few personally and I think "wow, that's pretty much me." I think difference lies in two places, 1, whatever condition I have (if any) is significantly less severe than some others and 2, I was forced to view society as a thing that thrived on standards of behavior and conditioned (with a few beatings and the lifetime of frustration with other's incomprehensible reactions) to always try and rise to the norm. By about 22 or 23 I figured out how "normal people" work well enough to emulate, anticipate and manipulate their behavior. Further I realized that by cleaving to a ridiculous set of idealistic standards based on "leaving people better than I found them", "doing the right thing" and "would I do this if my mother, girlfriend, spouse were here" I would always have moral superiority in any given confrontation, I also found it to be very practical because I despise violence. Many of my closer friends have found this moral authority to be exasperating.
I've rambled enough. I'm going to move on to the other forums to try and find out what the deal is with diagnosing adults that have spent 2 decades painstakingly crafting a personality so they can interact with regular society without tearing out their own hair or someone else's eyes.
05 Mar 2011, 1:24 am
