Uhhh... hi.

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My name is Sam. I'm 18 and... I have Asperger's.

I'm not really all that comfortable with saying this about myself because of various stereotypes about "Aspies" (y'know... people who work as computer programers, go to Star Trek conventions, talk with monotones... that sort of thing) and the media's general stress on describing Asperger's as a "high-functioning form of autism." I guess I'm kind of scared that if I say I have Asperger's, people will assume these things about me or think something's wrong with me... or maybe say something like "you seem normal to me" and think I'm just bitching about some imagined condition that I've decided I have because I want people to feel sorry for me. I don't have Asperger's as severely as some people I've seen, so sometimes it's kind of hard for people to associate me with the neural difference. Nethertheless, a few people I know who are well-acquainted with psychology have described me as a "near-textbook case" so yeah... I guess no matter how hard I try, I can't fool everyone even if I want to.

In the community I'm in right now (St. John's College, website at: http://www.sjcsf.edu/), people are very accepting of Asperger's, probably because a fair number of them have it in some way, shape, or form. That's a pretty good thing, although I do feel lonely fairly frequently despite all this. It's very easy for me to make acquaintances who I can talk to about various things, joke with, ect... but FRIENDS? Oooo... wholllle different ballgame there! And let's not even get started about my quixotic Epic Quest for some kind of female version of myself that I've had stuck in my mind since I was two years old and haven't been able to get out since.

It's kind of interesting how AS permeates just about every aspect of my life. While I greatly respect Charles Dickens as a writer, I hated every minute of Great Expectations when I was reading it for English in high school (tooo... many... goddamn... characters... with their petty.. little lives... and... AHHHH!). I am unable to commit to very many political issues because I can always see how the other side could make sense. Whenever my mother says something to me based on emotion, I demand logical support of it and set out to refute what she says if it doesn't make sense to me. I sleep hugging my pillow every night because I like the tactile sensation that doing so provides. There's other stuff I could mention, but I kind of don't want to make this drag on too much.

So yeah. That's me. I leave you with some of my passions:

-Playing music (Solo piano stuff; mostly original composition and improvisation... I'm not trained in any way)
- Listening to music (I like all kinds of things, so I won't bother to get into the complexities of my taste)
- South Park
- Ancient writings
- Biblical scholarship (Not a member of any religion and a firm disbeliever in many of the central claims of Christianity, but I find the various accounts and archaeological evidence supporting or not supporting them fascinating)
- Being Socratic
- Neurology
- History

Hello! Good post, apart from the bit about Star Trek (I'd love to go to a convention), it was very well written.
Yes it is easy to get lonely even in a crowd, I find.
I hope that soon you'll find that Asperger's is not something to be ashamed of, it is part of what makes you, you.
What led you to get diagnosed? Kinda curious. :wink:

Hi!

Welcome to Wrongplanet!

I hope you enjoy posting here!

I take it by your screen name that you're a jazz fan. Welcome to WrongPlanet, where improvisation is our middle name.

Haha, thanks. I am indeed a fan of jazz, along with some other stuff (classic rock, metal, indie-pop, classical, etc.). As a matter of fact, my best friend is a first-rate sax player who's currently studying jazz at USC. I have very fond memories of going to see his band play at a local coffee shop back in high school.

Eh, no problem that you like Star Trek. I didn't mean any offense to Trekkies; I just resent it when the media portrays all people with AS as being like that. And it's not so much that I'm ashamed of having Asperger's so much as I don't want people to think it means there's something wrong with me. I mean... there's Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Down's Syndrome, and I dunno... calling Asperger's a syndrome bothers me because the word "syndrome" implies more gravity than is actually the case. It's just an alternative way of perceiving the world and interacting with it; that's all there is to it. Many of our best thinkers over the milllenia probably were like this to some degree. I mean, hell, if the Platonic Dialogues can be trusted, Socrates acted "Aspergian" all the time! While doing so resulted in his death, he also ended up starting a philosophical revolution and thus achieving near-eternal posterity, unlike most NT's of his day. There are plenty of AS "role models" to find if you look carefully enough.

I don't have an official diagnosis and really don't want one. It wouldn't help anything and I have enough coping stratagies as is; no point in seeing a psychologist and/or psychiatrist to get that straightened out when I can cognatively influence my behavior on my own to a certain extent.

Hey Sam, welcome.

Just wanted to mention I went to St. John's College myself, back east in Annapolis (though I'm quite a bit older - I was class of 1991). I didn't have any idea back then that I might an Aspie - I just thought I was depressed and misunderstood. I can't help thinking you've got a good start on some self-awareness that can only serve you well, regardless of prejudice others might cary about a particular label.

Hi, and welcome. From the Nick that you are using on this board, I would gather that you are a fan of Miles Davis' Live Evil CD?

Oh cool, another Johnny. I'm actually going to the Annapolis campus next year for various reasons and may well graduate from there.

Hi and welcome to the forum. I hope you'll enjoy it. Not a single inch of emotion in this reply of mine. Oh well I'm extremely tired for no reason. Enjoy it this forum as I do.