Hello everyone,
I'll use this thread to introduce myself and basically list why I'm here.
My name is Jeroen, I'm 24, born and raised in a little town near the dutch belgium border in the south of the Netherlands. I live at home with an older brother with asperger aged 26, and of course my parents. My brother's "more apparent" asperger coupled with "open minded" parents led to my PDD-NOS and ADHD being diagnosed at age 22 only after trying several studies at the university and not able to find my place and quitting or getting fired from one job after the other for a couple of years. (in a nutshell)
The last two years I've had all my dreams and hopes blown to bits because my late diagnosis caused me to fall under a new law that started january 2010 and as a result of makes me unable to return to studying because I'll have my financial aid cut. (I can explain the details of this if someone is interested, but after typing 4 paragraphs I decided to delete it and summarize it in the sentence you just read in fear of you people losing interest.) The only thing I can do that guarantees me an income during some kind of schooling is by doing a "special autism oriented" 3 month course with a "contracted by the welfare department as an autism specialist company" that makes me sign a contract that says I'll have to work via them for X numbers of years afterwards because I'll receive an additional week here and there of extra schooling if the company I'm assigned to work has another kind of tedious job for me.
After thinking really hard about how I want to spend the rest of my life I came to the conclusion I need to go somewhere I'm not processed as cattle by "the welfare company" because they themselves are trying reaaallly hard to justify their yearly budget. But of course I don't have any money because I spend age 17-22 on and off jobs, and with the new law, don't get any financial backup to fill those gaps "a handicapped person" used to get if it turned he wasn't able to provide for himself properly if it was caused by a born "handicap".
To make a long story short and make my point; I've long given up my dream of finding some grey bearded master smith with a beautiful daughter somewhere living in mountains looking for an apprentice so I'm looking to move to another country for studying if I'm able to get some kind of grand or working with a autism institution as an autism expert, or any kind of collaboration of those two paths.
But where to start, and is this at all a possible dream to pursue? I thought I start here on this forum and get some information from people around the globe about their experience with autism and maybe network a little to help me get on my way.
I'll start my end with some major failures during my adult life:
- I stopped studying accountancy because 9 months in I finally started to settle down a bit and socialize and learned a couple of kids had most of their practical work done by their dads and when I went to report this to the professor of the subject got told I by the professor I was apparently a little snitching baby who needed to learn how the real mature world worked and that I'd have a hard time at school if I conducted myself in that way.
- I stopped studying psychology because after a year of walking around the city conducting interviews about peoples interests in shampoo containers or a study into how the positioning of a pot of peanutbutter in the supermarket will maximize profits I felt really useless, coupled with learning that half the class just makes up the numbers and goes out drinking, although I had sort of learned to deal with student lieing at that point but it still weighed in.
- Got fired from evening manager after a year and a half at local post office because "assistant to the day manager" was in charge for a week during summer vacations and called me up the day before wanting me to come in and do HER shift so she could go to the beach and when I pretty much just hung up got a letter THE NEXT day from the "boss" saying I had left an assistant in an unsolvable position by refusing to come to work.
- Got fired/quit from taxi job after working for a month with a boss that made me drive cars with wipers that don't work when the pressure of the rain falls down on them, tells me 10 minutes before the end of my shift that I have to make another 2 hour drive, and after me explaining to him that he needs to start that sentence with "are you able to work overtime, since it's 2 at night already" get told to drive to the depot after which he yells at me for 15 minutes "explaining" what kind of a baby I am.
- Got fired/quit from working as a gasstation helpboy for ending my shift 15 minutes early on christmas evening because I was going to dinner with the family of my girlfriend. Which in itself is something I could sort of agree to, as I did stop 15 minutes early. But this was after 3 months of getting promised a payraise. I was one of three "helpboys" and I pretty much did 90% of all the work, and he knew it, hence the supposed payraise he promised me but couldn't get cleared by the "rayon manager" which I told him "too bad, you promised, so pay up" about. Not to mention he found out about this by looking on the security tapes the next day and called me to "come do that 15 minutes NOW", at which point I already knew he was going to fire me about it and I just quit, because I was in the middle of christmasbrunch with my family.
And end my end with some small ones:
- Spend 45 minutes crying next to the road because some 14? year old girl told me to go away. I was riding my scooter and she, with earplugs in her ears and a phone in her hand texting, starting passing some old lady riding her bike as I came up behind the both suddenly as I was about to pass the both of them. Causing me to almost crash into the left road dividing strip of nature. I was able to drive on and approached her and asked her to watch the f**k out next time because she almost made me crash at which point she started yelling at me to go away and that I was some kind of dirty creep.
- Almost got punched in the face by a dad driving on the wrong side of the road with his little 5? year old driving on the car side alongside him. I came up to them driving on my side of the road, I stopped 10 meters/30 feet in front of them and talked/yelled to the dad that he needs to take his little girl to the PROPER side of the road because accidents will happen such as a scooter driver like myself NOT paying attention. He was aggressively pulling his girl closer to himself causing her to pretty much fall of the bike as I was saying this to make room for me, so I started to slowly pass them, at which point he made a swing at my face, but I just drove on.
- Had me and my scooter almost rammed by a "worktruck" because I was blocking the way. I was driving on the bikelane next to the normal road as some guys in a truck wanted to make a right turn. By law I'm allowed to pass first so he clearly didn't look or doesn't care, so I beeped, causing him to slam the brakes. I passed slowly just going on my way as he felt the need to start honking, madly, at which point I decided to stop and explain traffic rules, at which point he started revving his engine and inching forward by releasing his brakes, so I just drove on.
Thanks for reading, hope you guys can help me out, even if it's just a little, or negative for that matter.
28 Aug 2012, 4:40 pm
