KRIZDA88 wrote:
Hi everyone,
My name is Krista. I found out I had Asperger's towards the end of my senior year of high school (I'm a Freshman in college now). It was a huge relief to find out that I wasn't socially stupid, that I actually had a disorder that made it harder for me to react "normally" in social situations. I'm still trying to learn about AS and how to cope with it. I'm hoping that by joining this forum I can meet people like myself and get some new ideas to help cope with social situations and anxiety issues. My biggest issue with AS is the longing for social interaction and yet dreading social interaction at the same time. It is SO frustrating. I've never made friends with my peers very easily; I tend to make friends with people older than me a lot easier than I do with people my age. Now that I'm in college I'm struggling because I've yet to find anyone to hangout with on a regular basis. My roommate has pretty much decided she doesn't like me so she rarely (if ever) volunteers a single word to me. I have to initiate every "verbal exchange" (you can't really call them conversations), and I usually get the shortest most generic answer from her. Sometimes I don't mind, must mostly I just feel lonely because I don't have anyone I can just chat with about anything. That's another issue I have, I LOVE to talk, however the things I have to say are generally not that interesting to the people I'm talking to so after a minute or two I start to realize that they aren't listening to me and the crushes me. I know they don't mean anything personal by it but it hurts me badly, partly I feel that I have failed in yet another social situation and partly I'm upset because I think what I'm saying is important and they don't. It's usually things like that, which have made me avoid social interaction with new groups of people. I also have very little or no interest in the things that are popular with my peers, so that leaves very little for me to relate to. Anyway, now that I've told you my life's story
I would LOVE to hear from other AS people or anyone else who wants to say hi!
first off, welcome to wrongplanet! i am squier (as you can tell, but my real name is Quinn) i'm glad to hear you are taking your diagnosis well! when i got diagnosed in 5th grade (i'm now in 7th) i got really upset, it took me around a month to accept it. your roomate disliking you sounds like something mentioned about asperger's in wikipedia, that aspies are usually not accepting in communities (that won't be a problem here) as easily and tend to get picked on alot. i talk alot too, i don't usually get ignored like you mentioned (but i do talk about things that don't matter), but i will get off subject, like i get so into my thoughts during a conversation, that if my mind wanders ( my dad's joke is if your mind wanders, follow it!! !!) i will act like they are following what's in my head, so we will be talking about yesterdays math homework, and all of a sudden, I'll mention that mythbusters, my favorite show, is on tonight. what gets me really upset is when how some of my teachers talk to me like the way they talk to ali, and jerry, 2 kids in my school with down's syndrome (my parents always schedule a meeting with all of my teachers at the beginning of the school year to talk about how to approach my asperger's syndrome in a positive manner, they usually don't listen). you say you want to have social interaction, but you don't want to have to deal with things like social cues? wrongplanet is kind of a releif for that, because the way things are conveyed, there are no social cues to worry about, if you are worried people won't read something as a joke, i always put a [joke] or a [sarcasm] in the front of the joke, and a [/joke] or [/sarcasm] at the end....
real quick, lots of people here use "asperger jargon" so things may get hard to understand
aspie means someone with asperger's
neurotypical or NT is reffering to someone without asperger's
autie is a term used by the people who think asperger's isn't autism, it means someone with autism
there is another one i cant recall that means someone who wants to cure AS. since some of the people REALLY REALLY(*100) hate the idea of being cured, and some even go as far as to hate people looking for a cure, i would prefere not to be cured, but i know some people do, and with people with kids with low functioning autism, seem desperate for one...
again welcome to wrongplanet, and i hope you enjoy it!