A Cloaked Traveler Wanders In

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Under the cover of twilight, a hunched, shadowed figure wrapped in a dusty cloak strolled at a leisurely pace along the side of an aged cobbled road, appearing to have no particular destination in mind. However, suddenly, his head jerked upwards as if struck, and he inhaled sharply, as if startled. Impulsively, he changed course, veering far off of the beaten path in a haphazard manner that any observer could tell was quite uncharacteristic of the figure, until he reached a signpost entitled "Getting to know each other", where he stopped and surveyed his surroundings meticulously. Smiling in the manner of one who has just returned home after many years away, the figure nodded with a sense of decisiveness, and pulled down the hood of his cloak, revealing a chiseled, dark green face adorned with two bobbing antennae and teardrop-shaped eyes that glowed with a gentle cyan hue. Clearing his throat in an awkward manner not at all suggested by his smooth appearance, he opened his mouth to speak, bowing his head slightly as his flashy entrance tapered off into a disappointingly mundane introduction.

Hi. I wish I had something unique to say, but my story is pretty much the same as many of the members here. I'm a guy who's lived a rough life; regarded as a social pariah yet with no real explanation why other than an air of 'difference' and disregard for social norms that cause others to be uncomfortable around me. I have an IQ of approximately 140 and on paper I look like a golden boy yet there are facets of simple social interaction I have always failed to grasp and that have prevented me from developing meaningful or lasting relationships. Viewed as eccentric and aloof, having plenty of loose acquaintances but few true friends (a la Catcher in the Rye), I've always told myself that I enjoyed my unique status, that it was meaningful and semantically powerful to my life, but there was a small part of me that always resented it. Steadfast in the belief that my differences were unique and overall positive to my character, I've refrained from having myself examined in the past (even though I suspected that any psychologist looking at me would be jumping in excitement like they just hit the motherlode) because I did not want to assign a stereotyped label to myself, and most importantly did not want any sort of crutch or excuse for my behavior or my relatively tragic life, and still do not, as I am of the camp that views AS not as a disorder but as an alternate path to clear thinking.

However, recently my life was turned upside-down in the form of my first ever romantic relationship, one that began online and grew to unrealistically intense, fairy tale proportions before we had even met in person. Determined to a fault to make it work, I all but threw away my well structured and sheltered routines and crossed the world to meet her, only to have all the mental chemistry we had built up over the months be completely neutralized by my numerous physical and social idiosyncrasies, forced to watch in anguish as the most important endeavour I'd ever engaged in disintegrated right before my eyes with my powers of perception and my way with written words powerless to stop it or compensate for our complete lack of physical chemistry.

Lonelier than ever after having truly known love for the first time, I decided that something had to change. After discovering AS through reading John Robison's Look Me In The Eye and noting with some manner of trepidation how closely some of his mannerisms and thought processes matched my own, I began to research it more, eventually finding my way to these boards where, after reading over many of the posts, astonishingly found answers to almost all of the unanswered problems that have plagued me my entire life. Everything in my past suddenly made perfect sense; everything about my peculiar mannerisms, labored and complex thought processes towards subjects that others grasped intuitively, and other things that just were and I could not find any way to explain in any fashion that made sense to others... *Everything* clicked. I now intend to swallow my pride, bite the bullet and get a diagnosis in the coming weeks for the condition I am now 100% sure I have. I still do not wish to use this as a method to garner sympathy from others, nor do I want this to define my identity, however what I am hoping is that it will provide a manner of understanding and closure on various abnormal aspects of my life that I could just not explain beforehand as well as a community of people that, for the first time in my life, I feel that I can intuitively relate to.

Anyway, enough of this overdramatized sob story foolishness. I guess I should tell you all about myself.

As you may have guessed already, writing is my biggest passion in life. I've always had a natural talent for creative writing and I hope to become a well known author in the future, although at the moment my work is currently restricted to fanfiction and forum and MMORPG-based roleplaying that I do for fun in my spare time. I'm also heavily into philosophy and philosophical debate, particularly in regards to moral and ethical issues. Well-reasoned debate in general is also another big thing for me. I'm also into mathematics, physics (the theoretical kind, not so much the mind-numbing work-out-equations-all-day kind), psychology, video games and programming, and despite my aspirations for a writing career, I'm currently pursuing a Computer Science degree with a double minor in Physics and Psychology, although I am considering changing that to either actually do a Writing degree or, for the better work prospects, a specialized Remote Operated Vehicle program. I can pretty much do absolutely anything as long as it doesn't involve a lot of socializing. In particular I'm very interested in the Blizzard Entertainment universes of Starcraft and Warcraft (and yes, that even includes World of Warcraft) and my pipe dream is to actually be on their creative development team; the perfect opportunity to combine my skills in creative writing and programming to create new lore for the universes I live and breath to Aspergian proportions.

For current work, I'm actually in the Canadian Army Reserves. I joined four years ago when I was 16; at the time the structure, code of ethics and honour, and the challenge as well as the respect garnered from pursuing such a career appealed to me. It was basically a case of setting out to prove wrong the people who said that I'd never make it, and do what I thought the hardest possible thing I could do at the time would be. Despite the abnormally high levels of stress I went through even by Boot Camp standards due to what I now realize were Asperger's symptoms combined with the highly socially demanding nature of teamwork-based training, I've been working in the military for four years, although I've become jaded to that now by continued social problems as well as having discovered that the military is just as corrupt as any other organization, perhaps even more so in some areas.

Personality-wise; I seem to have a split personality of sorts. On the one hand, at times, particularly around people I am comfortable with, when I'm speaking about something I'm knowledgeable on, or when I'm online and free from the restraints and insecurities of my own flesh and sluggish oral conversational skills, I can come off as extremely stand-offish and arrogant (I'm sure some of you are pissed off at me already) and at other times, particularly when I'm out of my element, I am very reserved, quiet, and seemingly shy (although in reality I simply do not have anything I think is worth saying.) However, I do have well thought out reasons for everything I do, reasons that I've recently found out most people neither get nor even need due to the fact that their behaviors come completely intuitively to them. As mentioned earlier, I am determined to the point of stubbornness and have strong standards towards fairness, justice, and respect, mainly because empathy does not come naturally to me, so I've developed a particular framework in my mind of how people should be treated unless they prove otherwise.

In the end, I may seem cold and callous, but I really do care deeply about helping and protecting people, and to anyone who bothers with the effort required to earn my trust and break through my seemingly hard exterior, I have a heart of gold and will do anything I can to make the people I care about happy. I can be very generous and affectionate and really want nothing more than to find people who will get and accept me for who I am, who I develop deep and meaningful relationships with and who will treat me and desire my understanding and acceptance in the same way. If there's one thing I like just as much as talking about myself, it's hearing other people spill their own guts and trying to build an understanding of their lives and desires. While I may seem stubborn and inflexible at first, once you get to know me I can actually be somewhat of a pushover and will spoil you and lavish you with gifts and attention. (This is particularly true of romantic interests, which I only recently learned, but is also true to a slightly lesser extent of all good friends.)

I have a pretty goofy sense of humour; I find sophisticated humour to be the best, but I'm also into a lot of clichéd internet memes and otherwise really geeky stuff too. I'm extremely nerdy but also into working out, martial arts, and was captain of my rugby team in high school (slamming head on into other big guys and pushing and grunting in a scrum doesn't require a whole lot of physical coordination nor social skills), so I'm a pretty interesting hybrid of jock/nerd when it boils down to it, although my university years have seen me shift somewhat more towards the geeky side. In person I can be pretty quiet and introspective, somewhat of a Silent Bob type in that I rarely speak but when I do I often have something profound and possibly long-winded to say. Sometimes, however, I can actually be pretty silly and get on with a lot of completely uninhibited and slightly immature nonsense, particularly if I'm drunk or around people I'm very comfortable with.

I read a lot (as any good writer should); I'm particularly into writers like Neil Gaiman, Dan Brown, and Richard Knaak. I also play lots of video games, particularly RPGs and real time strategies as well as all of the Blizzard games. I also like movies, particularly comedies and those with deep themes (The Dark Knight and the upcoming Watchmen come to mind), anime (particularly Dragonball Z; I've always loved the 'pure' nature of both its moral themes and its raw fighting style and the method by which its characters acquire their powers as well as the powers themselves.), hanging out with friends, (small, personal gatherings, not so much large social events) and although I do not feel empathy easily for people, I love animals and am intuitively kind towards them. I have no genre restrictions on the music I listen to; individual songs either simply strike me or they don't. However, as a general rule of thumb, I particularly like metal and other forms of hard rock as well as techno and Irish folk music, and for the most part absolutely detest most country music.

Physically, I'm about 5'10; 210 pounds; somewhat muscular build. I'm pretty pale, have dirty blonde hair and hazel eyes. I've been told I'm actually somewhat cute, but I'll let anyone who manages to get me to trust them enough to show them a picture of myself be the judge of that. I'm also very left handed/right brained, and have all the interesting mental capacities that come with that to a pretty noticeable extent. I don't have it yet but I plan to get a tattoo of the latin phrase "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?" running up my left arm in the coming weeks. It's from Plato's The Republic and it means "Who will watch the watchers themselves?" I find it quite pertinent to my life, and although this is completely coincidental, as an added bonus the timing commemorates the release of Watchmen, in which that is actually one of the central themes.

For now, that's about all I have to say. I'm sure I'll think of more stuff to add later. I'm not new to the forum scene, so expect to see me posting around in the coming weeks like I already own the place. I apologize for the huge 'wall of text'... That's the problem that happens when one of your passions that you love to ramble on about happens to *be* writing itself. To anyone that actually bothered to read the entirety of this post, you have my heartfelt appreciation and I hope to speak more with you soon.

You put pen to paper well, BobTheMartian. Thank you for sharing and welcome to the Wrong Planet neighborhood.

Well, that was a show stopping intro. Saying hello back seems very prosaic and plodding in comparison

To WrongPlanet!! !

Your story has some similarities to mine though I am not as verbose....Hit my blog button for details..

Yeah, I feel for you there. I was also shuttled around a lot of schools, however I remained in mainstream the entire time for three main reasons. Firstly, where I'm from isn't as progressive as other parts in the world when it comes to dealing with these kinds of delicate cases, particularly controversial ones such as Asperger's. My parents kept that stuff well hidden from me though, so I'm still not entirely sure what went on behind the scenes. Second, I was simply smart enough that even despite my numerous problems with the social scene and being able to focus on classwork and homework, I was able to excel in most academic areas without making any sort of real effort or studying in the least. Third, my father always insisted vehemently that there was nothing wrong with me and that it was entirely the fault of the other kids (the big cliché being they were jealous of my superior intellect. The truth is though that I now strongly suspect that *he* has Asperger's, and worse than I do as well, so he would of course be oblivious. He's very insistent that nothing is wrong with him as well, although we all notice things about his overly stubborn tendencies and seemingly being incapable to consider the viewpoints or recognize emotions in others.

I enjoyed reading your post.

Thanks. People that read my posts generally do. (As in, people that don't like my posts generally don't read them. ) It means a lot to me.