I am twenty-three years old, and have only recently been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (diagnosed in September 2010, officially screened just this past month). The diagnosis has improved parts of my life and destroyed others, though thankfully I didn't have much of anything for it to destroy to start. I was seeing my doctors at the time to try to deal with my depression and anxiety, which I only admitted to to more than one person in 2009. Besides the Asperger's, depression, and anxiety, I have family issues to deal with — in fact, the most recent explosion of them was what made me decide to join here, finally — and the effects of an expensive college tuition and a failing jobmarket to top it all off.
In other words, I'm really depressed these days. Discovering that I have Asperger's has occasionally made me less depressed by making me feel less guilty about everything wrong with my life, but mostly it has made me feel worse, even though I think logically it shouldn't change how I feel about myself very much at all.
Recently it has made me realize that a lot of the problems between me and my parents, who I still live with, are because of my Asperger's. The same goes for the issues I have been having in my current job and in finding a new one. I'm hoping that by talking to others I may be able to sort things out a little better, or at least not feel so terrible about it all the time.
On less of a negative note, some basics about me:
-I am a graduate of film school and would ideally like to be a writer for teleivison some day.
-I am currently working in fast food, but actively looking for other work.
-I love animals. I live with two dogs and four cats, but only one of the cats is officially mine and will come with me when I finally (hopefully) move out. Her name is Mickey and she is a major force in helping me feel better, even though she is not always terribly well-behaved.
-I am more or less addicted to the internet.
-Possibly related to the anxiety issue, I have some major fear issues, including a fear of driving and a fear of insects that have occasionally been very detrimental to both my social and work life.
-I am a geek. I love science fiction and fantasy, and also some more mainstream stuff, like Glee and Mythbusters, to a point where it pretty much makes those things geeky in my case anyway.
-I live in New England in the United States.
-I am terrible at spelling without the direct aid of spellcheck. I apologize for this in advance.
-As seen above, I can be kind of a downer.
In most ways I am still learning about Asperger's, in that I am still trying to figure out what it is I do that is symptomatic of it. I don't think I really know what "normal" is, although I'm not entirely sure that's all because of Asperger's.
I feel weird writing/saying "aspie" but I know that reading/writing "Asperger's" over and over again is kind of clunky. To a lesser extent, the same goes for "neurotypical."
My family is generally neurotypical, though. My parents did not know what Asperger's was when it was first brought up. At the same time, I had a cousin who was bipolar (now deceased), an uncle who may have had Asperger's or some sort of neurological disorder (also deceased), a father on anxiety medication and a mother on antidepressants, a history of addiction in my extended family, and a schizophrenic first cousin once removed, so we're not exactly a picture of mental health... or functionality. I only speak to three of my nine still living cousins, mostly not by my own choice, and only occasionally, and my parental grandmother was probably abusive to her children. Although that probably doesn't have a direct effect on the mental health issues, it certainly doesn't make them easier to deal with, and has more likely than not contributed to physical health issues in many members of the family. At this exact moment, the neighbors are most likely being kept awake by the yelling going on in this house, so my immediate family isn't much better.
I also tend to write a lot at once. Once I start, I can't stop, kind of like with Pringles.
20 Jul 2011, 9:53 pm
I hope things start looking up for you soon.
