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Hello my name is Kinnery and I am 16.
What is your favourite dinosaur? Mine is the parasauralophus, although I like many different types of dinosaurs. In fact, sauropods in general are my favourite, but I also love the other types, and I also like prehistoric marine reptiles and pterosaurs.

I have a brother and father with asperger's, and I am just recently considering seeking testing for myself. My mother has always insisted that I am just strange, but that I don't have asperger's. However, today during a counselling session, I described a lot of the ways I feel, and she agreed that perhaps we should consult my doctor about having tests done.

In fact, how it happened was that we were having a normal discussion, and I said, "Of course, mom, we can talk about a compromise in this situation. That works for me," but then the therapist said, "Judging by your tone of voice, you don't sound very sincere," and I ended up breaking into tears and they asked what was wrong (after first assuming and trying to put words into my mouth), and I told them that I was trying really really hard to use the right voices and I described how I tried really hard to mimic social nuances and everything like that, and I described that which I will below describe again. It was quite freeing getting all of that off of my chest, and the therapist said she appreciated that I was trying and understood that it was very hard, which felt wonderful.

I am far too lazy to re-explain myself, so I will here copy a quote that I said to friends yesterday. It is ridiculously long and ranty, so I do not expect you to read it all, but it should at least partially explain why I am seeking an assessment.

"Mentire life, my brother was treated 'special' because he had aspergers. He got to go to 'theraplay' and I was a bit jealous so my mom bought me a horse toy. But because of this, if I ever mentioned that I suspected that I had asperger's, my mother would say that I was just trying to self-victimize.
As a very young child, I randomly walked up to people and said "I love everybody in the whole planet!" or I would say a fact about dinosaurs, so that meant I was normal because I was not shy. As I got older, it became unacceptable to walk up to people and say things without small talk first, and you could not interrupt with information about dinosaurs or space or wolves, so I had to stand back and study for a while to see how you were supposed to act. You can see the difference in my report cards: every other year or so, social rules would change, and you could see the drop in my grades and the comments of 'does not participate actively in social activities".
When I played with other kids, I would say "You are a wolf. You are the alpha, you are the beta, and I am the pup," and I would get mad if they talked or did something that wolves don't do and I'd kick them out of my game, haha. But then I'd get used to social rules and I learned how to fake small talk (I made myself a book when I was about 8 years old: "When somebody says, "How are you?", you say, "I am well!"") and I learned not to say my teacher was an old hag (That confused me so much... every morning she would joke, "Oh, I'm just an old hag!" and then one day a girl mentioned something about the teacher and I said, "She's an old hag!" and she got me in trouble ahhhhhh I didn't know why I was in trouble!! !!), and I learned how not to go up to a fat teacher and say "Are you pregnant?", and other such things.
Then when I switched schools, I had new kids who weren't used to me. I was smart as hell for my age but I couldn't keep up with the constantly changing schedule and the social requirements and I sat alone at recess and nobody sat with me and I thought, "Bonus! I can play alone now!" Eventually, though, I did crave some sort of friendship. I finally made a few friends in library club (spend every other day in the library for your whole lunch period, sorting out the books and basically being the school librarian because we didn't have one) and then in grade 8 I made friends and those friends taught everybody else about how I didn't always cross the line into unacceptable so I made friends with the whole grade and my skills at mimicry of social nuances had greatly improved so I was better able to be, or at least act, normal, and my friends started getting into deep conversations with me, like quantum physics, and then I was an excellent conversationalist so they learned to keep conversation heavy to keep me happy. At sleepovers and parties, I always ended up taking an hour or so to go and sit in a dark room and recuperate. At some point in the night I would retreat and get quiet and take off the little mask for a while and it was great and then I'd go back and I learned how to have fun and wear the normal-mask at the same time, and I learned that some people can like you when the mask is off!
But then high school started and I still wanted to play pokemon and house and pretend to be wolves and dinosaurs, and everyone at my new school was normal and I was teased all year because what I considered to be contributing to a class discussion was considered by others to be 'spazzing'. I spent the whole year learning to shut up and how to contain myself and not contribute because people just attacked me for it.
Then I went to NCCI, my current school, and they're all Baha'i so they have to love everybody, haha, and I am very friendly and sympathetic so people came to me with their troubles and people were tolerant and there were a few very strange, socially unacceptable people, and so I got friends and this year I was even elected to Student Council and I won the Miss Teen Friendship award when I competed in the Miss Teen Canada International competition, because I f*****g care about every person and for that reason, of course I can't have aspergers! People with asperger's can't empathize!
Except I f*****g know aspergers, I spent my whole life living with people with asperger's, and they care about people. Ridiculous misconception. So yes, damnit, I want to hear "You have asperger's," because it will be like somebody saying "No, you're not just worse at adjusting to life. It's not that you're just weird and awful, you have a real reason. You're not the only one who feels this way." Instead, I hear "Stop making excuses. You don't have asperger's." And I'm sick of that because I know I know I know, stop telling me. I just want to hear that I'm not crazy, that I really do have a genuine reason for being myself."


Also, I said, "...But anyway it's really nice reading about this stuff because it just feels like I do belong somewhere.

So even though I don't have asperger's... I get along REALLY well with people who do.

My brother and I have a pact where he can rant about Silent Hill for as long as he wants as long as I'm allowed to rant about dinosaurs for equally long. It works well. We also both are interested enough in each others' topics that we have awesome conversations for hours about it. We both suck at small talk though, haha, so we start conversations with "I was in the hospital in the video game and this nurse jumped out," or "The new x-rays they got of archaeopteryx really provide a lot of insight into how this dinosaur may have lived." And other people have no idea what we're talking about, haha."


In another conversation, I said the following: "It feels like I've had to study really hard to learn what social nuances are correct and stuff.
So then I build up this mask where I can pretend to be normal, and so I've learned the appropriate responses to different questions and stuff.
So it's not spontaneous, but I can fake small talk.

But then it's really exhausting to wear this mask. My brother is literally the ONLY person I can completely take it off with. When I'm with him, I'm allowed to pretend that my brother and I are on a pokemon adventure and it's okay and it's fun.
Most of my friends stopped doing that with me when I was about 12 or 13.

Anyway so one day at school this boy touched my neck and he didn't mean anything by it but he had warm skin and I hate warm skin so I curled up on the floor and put my hands over my ears and rocked and closed my eyes and hummed to make it go away...
in the middle of a stairwell.
And a bunch of people walked by and for days afterward people were asking me about it ugh..

It was awful.

And one day at school I had a meltdown because on the walk to school, there was snow on the ground so I couldn't jump over all of the cracks, and I'd had to walk on a different side of the street than I usually do. Everybody thought I was a freak, except for my close friends.

But of course I know I can't have asperger's. I have so many very good friends, and sympathizing/empathizing is one of my greatest talents in life, which basically disqualifies me from having asperger's.

...So what is wrong with me?"






Anyway, so although I probably don't have asperger's, I find myself to be very comfortable around those who have it, so I think I will like this place.








(edit: I broke up the rant into paragraphs to make it more readable!)
Hajimemashite!

Howdy,

Just a fast note to say hi. Have other things I should be doing but.... I do know people pick net names sometimes just out of thin air and...well you have my full last name in yours.
I'll be back at a later time to read all you wrote. In a very brief skim I saw a couple of interesting things, especially with your brother. I have distant cousin that would sometimes visit and we did the same type of thing. His offical is ASD.

Till later.

Hey! Thanks for replying!

Actually, Kinnery is my full first name! Fascinating!

Welcome and best wishes, Kinnery. My 7 yo knows more dino names than me.

I also joined new.. based on my 4 day research, it seems like you have some symptoms of AS.. but you also seem to have much more AS knowledge than me.. so basically ignore whatever I told and wait for the expert's opinion.

BTW, it was indeed a ridiculously ranty paragraph.. if I may suggest, it would have been more readable had you broken it into smaller paragraphs (that's my "correction" symptom acting up).

Nice to meet you!
I broke the rant up into some paragraphs. It's still just as rant-y, just a little bit more comprehensible, haha.

Sounds like you do have AS so I don't understand why they say you don't. Is it because you are friendly and could easily make friends?

Wow. Aren't you an interesting person? I remember trying to tell kids in the second grade about how there really were white elephants in Thailand and how the Emperor would give the sacred elephant to his enemies because it would bankrupt them to take care of the animal properly. Absolutely no one thought that was as fascinating as I did.
I like the duckbills.

Yeah. I have a lot of friends, I can empathize very well (a major part of AS), and I don't take things like sayings (i.e. it's raining cats and dogs) literally. Those kinds of things are the reasons that I don't think I have AS. But if it's a possibility, I'd definitely like to explore it. If I have asperger's, it will explain a lot of things, and I would be able to get help tailored specifically to my needs.

Interesting? Really? Haha, that's a new one.

Duckbills are my favourites.

Hi Kinnery!

Your story sounds very familiar. My youngest brother has severe autism and got a lot of attention because of it. All my life there seemed to be something wrong but nobody took me seriously. They would say things like "If you had autism you would be mentally ret*d like your brother, so you must not have it". Or even worse it would be something like "You seem very smart, so this is just your overactive imagination". Well my doctor just diagnosed me this week so I actually did know what I was talking about all this time!

By the way my favorite dinosaurs are Therizionsaurs (meat eaters that turned into plant eaters) and Eustreptospondylus (a meglosaur from england). However I really like the Acanthostega, a devonian fish with hands!! And the Anamallocarius from the cambrian era.

Like yourself I make new friends easily through social mimickery or just by letting them talk. Its ridiculously easy to make new friends. Unfortunately its very hard to keep the relationship going for very long because other people will start to notice something is wrong. Then they would say things like weirdo or whatever. One means of coping is by empathy, or trying to understand characteristics of the other person better so they wont be mean. Thats a defense mechanism, not a sign of being neurotypical. Trust your own feelings. Other people dont always know what they are talking about.

To WrongPlanet!! !

"Hello," Kinnery. Glad to see you aboard Wrong Planet.

Thank you for sharing your story, ArchVile!
It's nice to receive such a warm welcome from everyone here.