Hello, I’m 24 and though I’ve been diagnosed, I’m pretty sure I have Asperger’s Syndrome. Let me apologize in advance if I do something awkward or impolite in the text to follow. I don’t know what I’m doing.
It wasn’t too long after I was born that my family started to notice I was different. I’ve always had trouble in social situations. I never know what to do or say, (even right now, typing this) even around my own family members I feel like an outsider. I usually isolate myself from groups, even at family get togethers. I sit by myself practically everywhere because I don’t feel like I’m part of the groups that form around me. The trouble with groups is I always seem to find one that’s already been formed, and I am forced to try to join it. (Even this here, WP, this is daunting) Logically I should start forming my own groups, but I don’t particularly enjoy starting conversations, so I don’t do that. I have a love/hate relationship with being alone. I love the freedom and lack of responsibility that comes from being alone. When I’m with people I feel like I have an obligation to be friendly, entertaining and talkative, and I’m not always up for that. That responsibility goes away when I’m alone. On the other hand, I’m alone.
I have narrow, intensely focused interests. Unfortunately, no one shares my interests, or shares them the same way, or with the same focus I do. For example, I really like music and really like the band Genesis in particular. The problem with that is that Genesis is a band from the 70s and 80s and nobody my age seems to care about music that old anymore. At least not where I’m from. They like Lady Gaga and the other pop music out there.
They don’t like music the way I do. No one sits down with an album and listens to it start to finish. They don’t care about who worked on it. If they do happen to like a band, they don’t care what the member’s names are, or what gear they use. They don’t hear the little things I hear in music. They don’t care that “This little riff right here has, like, the greatest guitar tone ever.” They don’t have the attention spans to listen to the five, six, even maybe twenty minute songs that I love. When I was fourteen, I was obsessed with the band Styx. I bought all their albums, learned the words to all the songs. I knew everything about them. Most people in my age group seem to think Styx is the musical equivalent of…well you can fill in the blank.
The same goes for my taste in movies and TV. It’s not that I like obscure things; it’s just that no one likes what I like, or to the same degree I like it.
I make noises. I growl like an animal when I’m mad. I “dance” oddly and make strange movements. I like singing, but almost always in falsetto, and am obsessed with trying to sing high notes like Rob Halford, Robert Plant, or even the Bee Gees. I have compulsions, superstitions, and an extremely sensitive sense of smell. Someone cooking sauerkraut can ruin an entire day for me. One bad event, no matter how small, like cooking sauerkraut, can ruin an entire day or amazing things for me, sending me into an anger that I may not get out of for days. I don’t get other people’s humor. When people say mean things to me, and then follow it up with “I’m just giving you a hard time.” I have a hard time suppressing my urge to reply, “That doesn’t make it any better, you’re just a jerk.” Why do people do that? I don’t do that to them, it’s reasonable to ask they don’t do it to me, right?
My aunt was the first person to learn about Asperger’s in our family and sent my mom a copy of an article she had read about a father talking about his autistic son. Pretty much all the symptoms that the child that the article displayed, I displayed as well. I’m not sure why, but we ignored it. I guess we didn’t want to think anything was wrong with me. That I was going through phases or something.
We eventually realized I wasn’t. Over time, I have been able to adjust to NTs and how the NT world works. At least well enough to reasonably function in it. I have a job, a really good one, and I’m doing pretty well at it. I still live at home, but it’s only because I don’t make enough money to move out yet. (Due to my profound lack of social skills, I didn’t get my first job until I was 23, so this job I’m at now is only my second job.) If I did make enough money to move out, I would be living on my own, and I’d be okay I think.
I’d love to be an NT, but I’m not, and I’m never going to be one. The best I can do is try to learn and imitate them. Anyway, it’s nice to know there are other people like me, and that a place like this exists so we can all feel a little less weird, odd, or like misfits. (Well, that’s how I’ve felt anyway.)
06 Nov 2011, 1:24 am
