I've made 41 posts here, so I guess I should introduce myself. My usual modus operandi with new forums is to just dive into the discussion. If I like it I introduce myself, if there is a forum or thread for that. So you have already passed that test.
My name is Doug. I'm 20 years old. I live in near a large coastal city in the northeastern US. I live with my parents and commute to a large university. I'm male. I'm asexual. I'm an agnostic atheist. I have left-ish but eclectic political views. I'm normally very open about my identity on the Internet but for the time being I don't want to be on this particular site. I'll reveal the whole "me" eventually, but I'm not quite prepared to yet. Most of it is immaterial to this discussion anyway.
The road to discovering I had Asperger's started with my asexuality. I realized I was asexual earlier this year after a long period of uncertainty about my sexual orientation. I came to realize that my attractions to other people were aesthetic or emotional or intellectual and never sexual, and to accept that. I began participating sporadically in the forums of AVEN, a web site about asexuality. On AVEN I noticed that an unusually high number of people identified themselves as being on the autistic spectrum, and it was a fairly regular topic of conversation. I found a link to Simon Baron-Cohen's Autism Spectrum Quotient, Empathizing Quotient and Systemizing Quotient tests. I took them out of sheer curiosity and was surprised that in each case I got scores that were considerably more extreme than the average for people with Asperger's or high-functioning autism (AQ 44, EQ 4, SQ 54).
I'd heard of Asperger's before but never bothered to look into it because I have been seeing a psychiatrist and various other mental health professionals for social anxiety and depression since I was 12. I assumed if I had something, they'd have noticed.
I was rather shocked by the extremity of my test scores, so over the next few weeks I did a lot more research about Asperger's. To my surprise, I seemed to fit the criteria extremely well. I had characteristics I'd never even thought about before that turned out to be common among people with Asperger's. For example, I have sensory issues - I'm very sensitive to bright light, certain sounds, certain odors, and changes in air pressure and humidity, most of which don't bother the other people around me. When I was a child I flapped my hands incessantly (eventually I trained myself to stop doing this publicly because I got teased about it so much). I have terrible balance and physical coordination. And that's not to mention the main diagnostic criteria. I am and always have been terrible at social interaction, and I've had a lot of narrow, obsessive and unusual interests, one of which has been going for 15 years now and I assume will be a lifelong obsession.
So I brought my test scores and responses to the therapist (social worker) I see every other week. He said he didn't even need to read them, he knew where I was going, and that he'd known for years I fit the criteria for Asperger's, but didn't think it was necessary to tell me. I wrote a lot more about this on the thread "My therapist knew I had Asperger's but didn't tell me" in General Autism Discussion, for those who are interested and haven't read it yet.
As far back as I can remember, I've felt I was different from the other people around me. I didn't know how; I just knew that everyone else seemed different. In school, the adults liked me (as far as I know). I went to school, I did my work very well if perhaps a bit unconventionally, and I never harmed other kids. I don't know what the other kids thought of me when I was very young - I didn't know or care until the abuse started - but by the time I was eight or nine, the fact that I was different from them must have been as apparent to them as it was to me. I began to be subjected to a sort of low-level abuse that is very typical. As I got older, this escalated until I was totally socially isolated and was subjected to extreme verbal and lighter physical abuse. (I don't like being touched, so the physical abuse was magnified in importance to me.) In seventh grade (age 12-13) I began having regular shutdowns or meltdowns and wasn't able to attend school for long periods at a time. The last time I attended school was in eighth grade, which would have made me 13 or 14. I suffered from acute social anxiety and fairly major depression (though I have never been suicidal). I've been on an SSRI anti-depressant since then.
At 16 I started taking classes part-time at a local college. I moved to my current university when I was 18. I should in a year and a half or two years, at 21 or 22. I'll probably go on to graduate school. I don't feel anywhere near as different as I did in school and I certainly don't have to worry about anyone abusing me any more. At a big university there are lots of smart, unusual people around. I still have no real friends in real life. I don't know how to connect with people. My social life is mostly Internet-based - on the Internet, I have a healthy social life. I meet people from the Internet in real life occasionally. (Do Wrong Planet people do this?) I wish I had close real-life friends but I don't know how to go about making them. In the subliminal language neurotypical people use to interact, I suspect I inadvertently say, "I don't want to get close to you" to everyone I meet. I wonder if I still seem overtly different despite acting "normal" (I shake hands, make meaningless small talk about the weather, and so on, and I even try to make eye contact sometimes), and everyone's just too polite to say anything.
I feel like Asperger's is the missing piece in the story of my life. It ties everything together for me. It makes it all make sense. It's that difference I've always known was there and never could put a finger on. I don't know how my future will change now that I know, but at least I understand my past better.
24 Aug 2008, 3:46 am
