I don't like joining new places, especially something on such as sensitive subject (no offense to anyone here obviously!) but this place looks friendly enough. So...
My name is Rachel, aka corvuscorax. I'm 19 years old living in Metro Detroit. I like birds a lot, as well as video games and drawing.
I've been investigating for the last 2 months upon any sort of issue that I may have, since some people noticed it in one of my college classes. The person noticed that I walk on my toes and kinda look off into space when I talk to her, so she suggested that I go look online to see what that could be. Somehow I found a silly little quiz on personality disorders, but I think the result I got, "Schizoid", didn't really match me. So I did some research and ran into Asperger's along the way. Most of my friends have mentioned that they have it, so I felt inclined to investigate. The next two weeks, I searched online for information and took a few tests. Many of the traits seemed to link up quite well in many respects to the way I acted and think, so it really kinda shocked me a little - it seemed quite likely that I did indeed have it. I felt inclined to go seek professional analysis.
I wanted to go and get it checked out, but I still live with my parents, and my mother is actually much more of a burden in this situation than a help. She told me that it's impossible for me to have it for some quite offensive reasons that I won't repeat here. I think she doesn't understand what it is, but she nonetheless fights it to the bitter end, since she thinks it's a horrible thing.
Of course, I wouldn't think this way without some history on the subject, so I will provide a condensed profile of my life.
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I was never a shy kid growing up. I can't remember much in my early years, but I always remember trying to say hi to people and be friendly. The problem was, even though I thought I was being nice, people never just got along with me for some reason, and would think I was weird. Now that I'm older I understand that it's because my social skills were horrible (as in, HELLO LET ME TALK TO YOU ABOUT THIS ONE THING I LIKE OKAY HERE I GO). For example, when I was 9 years old, I was told that I can only say "Hi!" to people 4 times a day. Lol
I do recall playing with other kids, but only in games pertaining to my interests, namely Pokemon at the time. As such, when Pokemon fell out of style, I found myself being quite awkward when trying to play with others, so usually I would retreat to more simple activities such as swinging on swingsets.
I think my problem is that I always tried to be social and had the personality that would be golden with it, but I had absolutely squat social skills.
The school seemed to pick up on this at an early age. According to my mother (I only remember very faintly these events), they wanted to do some testing on me when I was 5. I'm not sure exactly what their methods were since my mother didn't elaborate on the issue, but they were sloppily executed. They claimed I had some sort of developmental disorder (which remains unknown to me what it apparently was), however, my mom claimed there was nothing wrong with me, and made me take an IQ test as her proof. I scored 134 and she thus successfully made them back off temporarily.
Because of this event, she does not trust most psychologists or psychiatrists.
I was treated quite poorly in Elementary School, from the abuse of my peers to the negligence of the faculty. As such, I was quite lonely and my friendships were shallow and not long lasting, and I spent more time at home alone drawing or playing Pokemon than hanging out with friends. I was suspended twice (possibly three times) in Elementary school for fits of rage invoked by constant teasing.
My mother told me that if I were to do it one more time, that I would be kicked out of the house, because I was a psychopath. It wouldn't be the first time she used this excuse.
As I got older into Middle school, I managed to hold in my anger a lot better, but I became more panicky because I worried about what my mom would think if I did anything wrong. Because of the preliminary IQ score taken earlier, she held me to a very high standard, and thus falling below that standard made me feel extremely anxious.
At this time I was obsessive as ever with Pokemon. To help "control" my obsessiveness, at one point she completely banned me from accessing Japanese media to try to tackle my obsessiveness over Pokemon. She thought it would make me become more diverse, but all it really did was eventually shift my interest to birds (which fundamentally I was interested in, but exploded in interest at this point).
In addition, I was also still quite as oblivious as ever, and got in trouble several times for saying things I shouldn't have, like "I'm a cereal killer" and stuff like that. Mom just wanted me to not screw this stuff up anymore, which made me even more nervous.
In high school, the stakes were higher, as not only did I have to achieve good grades, but also I had to obtain a high ACT score.
For the first two years of High School I attempted to get friends from my traditional "HI LET'S BE FRIENDS THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT" style, which I had been completely oblivious to even up to that point. Of course, it didn't work out as planned and I would thus not really hang out with anyone but the mentally handicapped kids that would hang out by themselves in the lunchroom. They appreciated my presence.
Although I had been able to suppress my mouth and anger at this point for the most part, I still was an anxious wreck because of the whole grades and "self control" thing. As such, my parents viewed my work as lower quality than that of my sister's, despite me getting better grades. This did nothing to help my situation.
At this point my obsession with birds was in full swing, and with the addition to my addiction to the internet, I found myself spending little to no time with anyone else, and hanging out with others felt more of a tiring chore. Again, my mother tried to suppress my obsession with the internet by attempting to disable it, but I managed to find workarounds. I namely resorted to the internet since it was an audience that would listen.
By the second half of High School I finally managed to find someone I liked, my boyfriend. Although we are very close, I can't spend too much time with him or else I fall asleep on him, which is quite rude!
Now, in college, I found myself falling into the same silly social traps that I did in my earlier schooling years, such as my awkward introduction conversations. However, this was how I managed to find my best friend, so it wasn't all for the worst! He happens to have Asperger's, interestingly.
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So here I am now. The most recent events concerning this issue have made me quite upset. My whole life I was told about how normal I was and how I just need to bite the bullet with my quirks, but now I'm starting to believe that they were wrong. I don't hate my mom for what she did, she was just trying to make me an independent person, but at the same time I think that at this point she is only standing in my way into improving myself, since ever since I started looking into this stuff about AS that I realized that these things were problems. I felt that I should try to seek help from people who probably know more about it than a couple of internet friends.
A big problem in this situation is that since my mom reviles these sort of evaluations, I have no access to medical insurance, nor transportation, information or support with this in the household, thus making it extremely difficult to get external help. Even if it turned out to not be this, it'd be helpful to know what it really was!
I also have slight difficulty with remembering people's faces, learning vocabulary (but not grammar), and often flick body anxiously in ways such as twiddling with my hair, rapidly shaking my foot and applying pressure to my eyes.
I apologize for the long story, but I hope it helps in describing my situation. Thanks for reading, and I hope this place helps out in my situation.
PS: I love the bird-themed member titles! Pretty cool!
29 Apr 2012, 1:27 pm
