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Hi, my name is Craig. I haven't been diagnosed but I am amazed by how many people in this forum have the same issues as myself. I'm a 39 year old network administrator and do pretty well in my job when it doesn't entail working with others. I've always known there was something different about me and I've pretty much been on a quest to figure it out for most of my life. I have many of the signs involved with other social disorders, such as Social Anxiety, and ADD, etc but there was always something that just didn't fit. I've always overlooked the autistic side of the spectrum because the thought of being autistic made me feel even worse. I never new there were different degrees of autism. I guess I just figured I wasn't like Rain Man so I didn't have autism.

A week or so ago I saw the movie P.S. I Love You in which one of the characters had AS. What stood out was the part about always being rude. Never being able to sense when someone will be hurt by what he says. I've always wondered why people would get so mad at me from time to time after I've said something to them. I've had people ask me why I can't be more sensative. I guess I just thought it was the way I was.

I've known for a long time that I had difficulty picking up on facial expressions but over the years I have learned to cognativly notice those things and try to interpret them. To be completely honest I thought it worked that way for everyone. I just thought women weren't flirting with me because they weren't attracted. Well now I find out that they flirt with me all the time, I just fail to pick up on it. Not only that but I will often misinterpret platonic and romantic.

I've noticed over the years that I do these little things with my hands and face. Most of my sweatshirts have torn cuffs on the underside because I am constantly rubbing my fingers on them. I also have this weird thing with my face, lips, and nose where I will scrunch them over and over. Sometimes it gets so bad that I get soars inside my mouth. Then to make things worse I bite on those soars. I also have this thing where I put my forefinger inside the gap between it and my thumb and rub over and over, especially when I am in a social situation where I am the center of attention.

Some other issues I have...

- There are times when I am in deep thought that I will start pacing across the house without even noticing it. Once, to my best recollection, I did it for over an hour before I finally noticed.

- I'm very clumsy, people keep telling me that I need to get myself a mobile tippy cup. I'll often times find myself knocking a glass over and then trying to catch it in an awkward manner. I can remember once telling myself, "For christ sake Craig, if that had broken you'd have cut the crap out of your hand."

- In 39 years I've had maybe 4 romantic relationships. Most of which were with girls that I really didn't find attractive and all ended before 6 months was up.

- I have a strong desire to stay at home, even if I find an activity to which I'm invited appealing.

- I have a VERY difficult time putting my thoughts into written words without turning it into a list of some sort.

- Although I love numbers and math I tend to get frustrated with large formula. The only "math" class I really excelled at in High School was geometry.

- I love reading and writing poetry but a lot of the time I have a hard time putting my feeling into words. A three verse poem can take me weeks if not months to write.

- I tend to be a know it all. My friends 9yo daughter and I play this game where she comes up with a topic and asks me if I can tell her about it. 9 times out of 10 I can go into minute detail about the subject. One of my friends actually calls me, "Her favorite encyclopedia."

- I have favorite clothing that I like to wear. Purchasing new clothing can be a chore. First because I don't know how it will feel on me and second because there's to much anxiety involved in trying things on.

- I often times find myself telling a check out girl at a store to forget about it when there's a discrepancy with something. Like yesterday I had a $10 off coupon and there were problems. Instead of dealing with the anxiety of having all those people waiting behind me I told her to forget about the coupon.

- I often have a very hard time with subjective ideas. If I can't see that there's a way to "figure it out" I lose interest very fast. For instance although I love reading, I can't read philosophy books because they just don't make sense to me.

- I find that I will repeat what other people have said, kinda like I am trying to finish their sentence.

- I have extremely poor grammar although I am meticulous about that bad grammar. At times I will go over something I've written many times rewriting and rewording, but the grammar never gets better.

I could sit here and name off tons more little things that I've noticed, but these are some of the major ones. A lot of the others that I have I never noticed until I started reading about AS. I tend to be somewhat of a hypochondriac so I am not completely convinced that AS is what I have but it's sure looking that way.

I'm really glad I've found this place because it comforts me a lot knowing that there are other people out there similar to me.

ttfn

-Craig

Really? I'll have to check that out.

Welcome Craig, to your home planet.

Yeah - I didn't know about P.S. I Love You either - It probably looked too Rom-Com dull for me. I'll have to check it out.

I can relate to pretty much everything you've written and you sound pretty aspie to me.

You could try the test if you were feeling adventurous though I think I can almost guess your score.

Aspie Quiz at http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

I hope you have a good time here.

Welcome Craig!

I apologize, I forgot to mention that. Yes, I saw that link a few times here and decided to take the test. It tells me that I am Aspie: 155 of 200 and HT: 46 of 200. According to that I am Aspie, but I am still trying to make sure I'm not just making this up in my head as another one of the shells I've created to protect myself from the world. I really feel good about this discovery, almost relieved. I don't think I have felt this good in years. My only fear is that it'll be just another failure, and back to feeling like crap all the time, if it's not. I guess that's why I am so afraid to go see a real doctor for a proper diagnosis. I guess I'll have to work on that.

Thanks for the Welcome, hopefully I'll be around for a while.

-Craig

Nice to meet you, Craig.

Welcome to WP!

Hi Craig,

welcome to WP.

Would getting a formal diagnosis benefit you at the age of 39? I know that some people want to get a diagnosis so they have confirmation...but I know of others who are ok with being self diagnosed and don't see any real benefits in paying a lot of money to have someone confirm what they already knew/suspected.
In any case, don't rush about getting a diagnosis. Ponder it for a while.
If you go for a diagnosis and the outcome is you have AS, then it will be a relief i'm sure. If they say that you don't have AS...Then it's just another reason for more self-exploration.

I hope you enjoy posting here.

Hi and welcome to the Aspie community...

Welcome