Evenin' all. Massively confuscated person here...

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'Lo all. So I'm a 22-year-old bloke in Merrie olde Englande with many wonderings about what my head does. I've basically been a melancholy kind of guy for as long as i can remember - i spend a great deal of time low-spirited and / or outright depressed, and have done for a lot of years: essentially as long as i can remember, at the risk of sounding all emo and melodramatic, heh . I've never been much of a socialite - I've always felt uneasy even around my closest friends and I can rarely think of anything to say that isn't sarcasm, a joke, or a combination thereof. I've always put it down to the fact that i feel depressed, and that if I got rid of it I'd become all nice and social again, but now I'm beginning to wonder if I might be aspergic or autistic. I happened to see a list of the symptoms of asperger's and a lot of them seem to match up to me... but on the other hand, I'm not sure if they match up to me for the right reasons. For example, I'm not very social and can't really hold a lengthly conversation with anyone, but i spent a good deal of my life living on a farm in the middle of the countryside, which wasn't the best place for social interaction in the first place, and I'm also of the general opinion that very little of what i say is interesting, so I tend not to say things even when I can think of things to say. I sometimes take sarcasm literally, for example one of my friends might say 'you're really annoying!' and I think he's being serious - but often I have recognised that it's sarcasm, it's just that there's an untrusting part of me that keeps going 'but what if you're wrong? What if he genuinely IS being serious and you're not interpreting it right? Best play it safe.' I do seem to have an especially caustic sense of humour too - I often make insulting cracks, and sometimes I've been told that what I say might border on insulting. But more often than not, again, I often realize that what I say might be insulting, but i go ahead and say it anyway... no idea why, I'm weird like that.

I think I qualify for the delayed motor development side of things, but again, I'm not sure. I know I took ages to learn to ride a bike, but my brother teels me that it seemed more out of fear than anything else. I did have messy handwriting though, and I have a flailing kind of run; legs going everywhere, heh.

Um, other things... I live a routine life, but I don't like the routine, heh. I've often tried changing and yet always seem to end up doing the same things. I like change and excitement once I'm in it - for example, I like days out to places, but until I'm actually there I always feel apathetic towards it. I've had a lifetime habit of twisting my hair which probably comes under the 'repetitive behaviour' thing as well.

Also, I think I might be Hyperlexic - I was reading at 7-8 year-old level by the time I was 3, apparently. I'm not sure if that qualifies, but an article i read said that qualification for it was 'to be reading whole sentences' and I could do that, as I recall... I spoke like a professor in school as well, heh.

Hm... having written all that, maybe I do have asperger's, after all... still, I'd value all your opinions, since I really only know what wikipedia and a few other sites told me

Oh yes, I should probably mention something besides the inside of my head, so, I'm a university english student who does karate and plays far too much World of Warcraft

Nice to meet you, Fen.

Welcome to WP!

Evenin' Fen. Welcome to WP. Whereabouts in England are you from?

I bet you've played against one of my sons on WoW. You ought to try Guild Wars on which another one of my sons designed the levels.

Hi Fen,

welcome to WP.

I'm not sure if you have AS or not...I'm not one to make that judgement. There are a few online tests around this site though...I'm sure someone will have the links as I don't. [sorry!]
I hope you enjoy posting here.

welcome

Welcome Fen!

To WrongPlanet!! !

Heh, cheers all for the warm welcome

Tequila: I'm from Derbyshire, a land of big hills, lots of sheep, and a great deal of absolutely nothing to do I'm currently at university in Hull - not sure whether I prefer country life or city life now after being here a couple of years; lots of stuff close by in the city, but you don't get roaming chavs in the countryside

Lelia: He's not Leeroy Jenkins is he? (Excessively geeky reference there, I apologise heh) I've got a few friends who play GW, though I haven't tried it myself yet. Your son's a games designer? That's pretty awesome

So where's everyone from and such?

welcome to wp regardless of aspie-ness or not. Sounds a lot like my life sometimes.

You might wanna check out the sticky: questions about you for that one, or send a PM if it is a particular member you are interested in.

I used to play WoW... but I got totaly addicted to it so I quit... back in the day where there were only 60 levels and the molten core was the hardest instance. Still got plenty of friends who play it though. Cool game... if you can handle it, which I apparently couldn't.

Anyway, welcome to WP Fen, and I will try not to use too much sarcasm with you

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Hi, Fen. I felt bad for most of my life too. I hope you never have to feel that s**t again. I feel terrible right now.

Hello Fen. So you read the wikipedia article on AS? Me too. How else do we learn about these things if our family and friends don't tell us? I felt the same way that you describe, all through childhood, and nobody ever knew that I might be fitting a model for AS. Maybe for you, growing up isolated on a farm is not the cause, but it doesn't challenge what your natural tendencies are, you know, the ones that may make your social interactions seem awkward and the ones that may make you tend to draw inward and/or feel depressed. I was like you all the way through high school. In fact, my family would spend every summer up in the woods and I hardly ever saw another soul when not in school, which is not exactly the environment to help someone with AS learn social skills.

Then something snapped when I went to college and I randomly fell in with a bunch of really great friends. I think they were all loud and outgoing and eccentric so they didn't notice anything strange about me, but secretly I was learning so much about social interaction from them. I could contribute a random comment or sarcastic remark in the midst of a huge discussion, and they would think I was cool and like me, rather than think I was weird and try to exclude me. I think those first six months at age 17 changed me and put me on a different course. Now people are less likely to feel awkward around me, and I them, though aspects of AS pervade my life and social interactions every day and always will...and I am just fine with that.