My name is Raymond Majewski, and I am 31 years old. I have had considerable problems during childhood, which I prefer not to go into detail with at this time, though many of the more extreme problems have dramatically disappeared, thanks to being placed into a specialized school for people with learning disabilities.
I was never diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, however, though I have been diagnosed with ADHD through childhood. I have also been diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia at one time, which was considered a misdiagnosis, and changed later on to borderline personality disorder with dissociative and OCD traits. I believe now, however, after reading about Asperger's syndrome, that that diagnosis is most likely to be wrong.
I, myself, tend to live in my own world, though I haven't totally excluded myself from the outside world. My social skills are okay when needed. For example, I don't have too much of a problem during a job interview. Eye-to-eye contact for me is okay, unless I am emotionally stressed, then everything around me feels as if it starts closing in and suffocating me. I then have trouble concentrating on anything, and has led to some emotional outbursts in the past with a feeling of tightness in my stomach, as if someone is tying a knot, and just keeps on tightening it repeatedly.
Why would I say, however, that I live in my own world? That's always how I've seen myself, ever since my childhood. I basically do. I tend to avoid social contact and have never had friends, not because I never wanted to, but because I never cared to. Maybe I could have, but my emotional state seems flat, and I have trouble conveying my emotions to others. That bothers me, so I just never chose to get into social relationships. If it's not a relationship, sure, I can talk quite articulately. When emotion starts to get involved, however, I just want to get away. If there's too much emotion involved, I start feeling slightly light-headed, numb and empty of sorts, and unable to express myself appropriately. I find this more of a problem than anything, but it's a problem that I've learned to deal with in a strange sort of way. I passed school with a BA in Information Systems without almost any major problem.
The strange thing is, and I don't know if this is relative to Asperger's syndrome or not, but there are definitely traits. I have passions, very deep passions, that have sporadically changed through childhood, usually one every six months. Once I hit my later teenage years, however, I've had a passion for water, rivers, mostly. This passion seems to have stayed with me. These passions, when they changed during childhood, were accompanied by what I've always called emotional highs. The passion was always much more extreme during the height of a high, which would then slowly go down to a low. But I've always wanted it to stay on high. During such a high, I became so engrossed, that I didn't just gain an interest, but rather feeling emotionally connected. During a low, my interest dropped dramatically, though it was still a passion that I was interested in. Nowadays, since my passion stays mostly with rivers, the emotional high goes up and down over time. If that doesn't sound strange, then here's an even stranger thing:
I feel emotionally connected to everthing, all the time. I look at a wall, and I feel as if I can communicate with it, but I know for a fact that this isn't true, therefore it's not a delusion. It's more like an emotional connection telling me that I want to communicate with it. It's the shape of the boards that define the wall that I feel connected to, not the wall itself. It's strange, but that's the only way I can explain it. The passions I feel are most likely related to this bizarre emotional connection. It might sound overwhelming to be emotionally connected to everything, but it's really not. It can be, but most of the time, it's not. It gets uncomfortable, however, during stressful situations. It's like I look at something, say a part of a wall or door, and don't want it to know what's going on, so I will run off away from the source of the stressful problem and into another room. But it gets a bit stranger yet.
I talk to myself. Yes, I can converse with myself for hours. These conversations increase dramatically during stressful situations, though I do it all the time, regardless. I ask a question, and answer myself back, like I am talking with another person. I don't create the image of another person when I do this, however. I talk, as if I am talking to my environment, focusing on what is around me. I might focus in on the wall, more or less a part of the wall, wondering what it would be like if it could talk back to me.
I live this way. In regards to passions that I've had, the same is true. I give these things emotional connections. It's strange, I know. But I live this way. I never, however, talk to myself in public or around anyone else, because I know it's very strange. However, I have been caught on occasion. I will do it in a bathroom quite a bit, just go into an uncrowded area of any sort during a time of stress. Most of the time, I make sure I won't get caught, but there were those few occasions when in school that I got caught. Twice, somebody thought there was somebody else in there.
I don't know. Do others with Asperger's experience things this strange?
I know, I've written a lot. But I am proficient in writing. I can't just write a few sentences. I am always in deep thought, almost constantly. I can ramble on and on and on, sometimes, for hours. This is why I excelled through college, because I never had much of a problem with English or doing reports. It's like I can't stop thinking. It's like I can never clear my head. It's become so bad, on occasion, that I needed to take a sleeping pill just to fall asleep. It's not that my thoughts ramble, but more like I can't get my mind off many subjects.
Ray Majewski...
31 Mar 2006, 8:29 pm
