I managed to stumble upon WrongPlanet today through my Googling of various articles about Asperger's, and I've enjoyed reading through a lot of the content that has been posted on these boards. It's great to see a community where people talk openly about their experiences, and I hope to get through a lot more of it in the coming days.
Seeing as this seems to be the place to introduce oneself, I'm Eddie. I'm 24, live in the south of England, and I'm pretty certain that I have Asperger's. I've suspected this for a couple of years now, but it's only recently that I've looked into it in a lot more detail. I'm going to start going through the process to hopefully get an official diagnosis in a couple of weeks, but I'm not sure exactly how that will all work when I'm dependant on the NHS.
As for my experiences with Asperger's, it's never really had that much of an impact on my life, although recently I've been thinking that I've gone out of my way to avoid things that would be difficult. I've particularly done this in the past three years since I graduated from university. Both that and school were not pleasant experiences for me, but I always just assumed I wasn't one of the cool kids rather than anything more underlying. My social interactions have always been pretty painful. I have a very small friend group that I've had since school, but I go out of my way to avoid social contact with anyone new. Anytime I'm forced into such a situation, people tend to think I'm something of an ass. I'm blunt toward people even when I know I shouldn't be, a lot of awkard silences ensure and I've never been able to make eye contact with people unless I absolutely force myself to. It's only in recent years that I even realised that wasn't considered "normal".
I've even gone as far as to get a job working from home as a way of avoiding people on a day to day basis. Granted, it was just the job I happened to get from tons I applied to, but now I'm in it, I feel no desire to change it. This tends to be seen as strange by those around me given that the job itself is seen as being below me (it is), the pay is absymal and if I had any sense I wouldn't have stuck with it more than six months. I get as far as looking around for other jobs though, then I think about the interview process and the probability of having to face people daily and I stop bothering. I'm pretty comfortable with this particular arrangement though as money isn't something that interests me as long as I have enough to live on.
Beyond all this, I seem to fit almost every AS trait that I've read about. I rotate through obsessions every few years, usually something media related. It was films a few years ago. Now it's music. I channel this through the writing of a moderately successful music blog. I've even been putting together the odd live gig of late, which is kind of weird as it goes against the whole avoiding social contact thing. I don't know if it's normal for one trait (the obsessiveness) to push past another (avoiding social contact), but that's what it feels like I'm doing in this case. I'm analytical and logical in my thinking to an extreme, to the point where I end up voicing opinions that are entirely unpopular. Answers arrived at through logical thought make far more sense than those reached emotionally to me, so I tend to follow that way of thinking. I could go on and on here and still leave a ton out, but I'm clumsy, have always felt separate from everyone else and have a whole bunch of OCD tendencies, although I don't know if they are directly related or not.
Anyway, it's only lately that I've started accepting all this as something that can possibly be explained through AS rather than me just being socially useless. I brought up my suspicions with a girlfriend a couple of years ago who quickly dismissed them. Only in recent months have I started being more open about it all again. I explained it carefully to a close friend who didn't offer an opinion one way or another, but was supportive. A couple of weeks ago I decided to go to a doctor to start the road to an official diagnosis. I haven't actually told anyone other than a friend online that I'm doing this yet. I will tell those around me, but it seems like an awkward subject to bring up. In the meantime though, I'm writing things like this on this board to a bunch of people who will hopefully understand in some small way.
Now if you've made it through all of this, I commend you and appreciate you taking the time to read this. Apologies for the rambling nature, but I've never set out all of that in any detail before, so I was pretty much coming up with it on the fly. As I said earlier, this seems to be a great place for people to talk openly about this, and it's nice that I'm able to share all of this.
Eddie.
17 Mar 2007, 5:21 pm
