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Hi everyone. I just joined this site. My story, so far.....Typical weird kid who was verbally and physically abused by my peers, and a teacher or two, from kindergarten through junior high, then just regular verbal abuse in highschool. Have been physically awkward, clumsy all my life, diagnosed with motor apraxia around age 4 or so after having had my second grand mal seizure. Took anti-convulsive medications for 8 years, stopped taking it, had no seizures, supposedly, although in later years I'd wonder if I had petite mal ones. Various teachers over the years mentioned the word "gifted", but didn't receive educational testing for it until highschool. Was mainstreamed in the New Orleans Public Schools and even a Catholic school to much disaster. Have always been extremely honest/blunt.
Was considered something of an anomaly by a neurologist when being tested for disgraphia, because I had poor hand eye coordination, but could draw very well. Was pretty much a straight A student, except for the higher maths. Went to an arts highschool and a regular highschool and graduated with multiple scholarships. Went to a local university, thought everything would improve with the freedom of college, had more social problems, couldn't read cues, lost the few friends I made, lost my scholarship, ended up essentially homeless and severely depressed.
Finally started seeing a psychiatrist regularly.....my mother had been trying to get me to go to one since I was 15, but I refused at the time. And mental illness was present on both sides of my immediate family.
Got various diagnoses, tried a bunch of anti-depressants, nothing worked really well.
Came out as a lesbian at 19, ended up in a destructive 3 year relationship. Was sort of getting on track until Hurricane Katrina, then ended up in Dallas, TX for 3 years almost, and also traveling around the country with supposed friends who would take me in, and then lie to me and kick me out.
Most of my doctors and therapists wouldn't listen to me. Ended up back with my mother, in the middle of nowhere in Florida last summer. Found a doctor that was, at least, willing to listen. Couldn't stand living in this small town with no mobility. I don't know how to drive-too many sensory, directional, motor issues. And there's no viable transportation system here other than a car.
Left abruptly to live with my supposed best friend in the D.C. area. Hey, who can be more accepting of me than a bona-fide genius, right? So, so wrong. Was kicked out after two weeks. Went back to Texas. Ended up working another dreadful retail job last year during the holidays. Quit and came back to Florida.
Living off my meager disability income, but not enough because I'm 25.
Got an appointment with my last doctor here in Florida. Before I left, he had said that he thought I was alexithymic.
Had mentioned HFA/ Asperger's to him after I had come across something about it online. I had been researching it because someone had told me about their niece being diagnosed with it. Just saw the doctor recently and he didn't mention AS, but mentioned AD/HD/ . Saw a therapist there who asked me why I thought I may have AS. and then kind of dismissed the notion. I can and do make eye contact. But growing up I had to make eye contact to survive, so I don't know if it was natural or a learned skill because the need for that started so young.
Anyhow, now they want to get me neuropsych evaluations, but that's expensive. So, I'm not sure what will happen.
Does it even matter if I have a diagnoses? I've got to figure out how to survive in the long run.
Right now.....living with anyone is hard. Over the last 8 years, I've been more and more irritated by odd noises, sounds, stimulation. I blanked out and walked into oncoming traffic a few years ago, and I wasn't suicidal, at the moment. I have paced and fidgeted all my life. Been unorganized and have no sense of time. Most teachers didn't notice too much, as long as I could stay seated and follow the rules, which I did. Or they merely characterized me as nervous. Besides I was verbal, a good reader. Although I can't finish a book for the life of me. Can't watch movies either, figure out the plots too quickly.
Right now, my doctor admits that I don't fit classic diagnostic criteria, and says I'm an anomaly to him too. Sorry for rambling on so long, but I've been searching for answers for so long, and I wonder if this sounds familiar to anyone?

Yes, many of your words have a familiar ring to them, Song-Without-Words. Here's wishing you all the Wrong Planet best in your searching for those answers. Take care now and welcome to the WP community.

Welcome to the message board, Song-Without-Words.

Very very familiar situations there. Would be quickest to say that I relate well to most of what you describe.

The benefits of diagnosis are many. In some parts of the world it means financial support. Also, people close to you may need a professional diagnosis to take your condition seriously. If you have any other psychiatric conditions to treat, and they're affected by AS directly, it can help to see the interaction. And its also possible that you're mistaken, so a diagnosis could help you move on from that. (I'm not a professional, so I hope I don't sound like i'm diagnosing here )

I hope that you find some useful information.

To WrongPlanet!! !

Thank you everybody for the welcome.
I know that diagnosis does have its benefits. I'm not sure it would provide me with more financial support, since I already get SSDI for depression, and they don't increase the amount based on the number or severity of one's problems. Although, having an official diagnosis would be good for interacting with some people, maybe in live support groups...although, I tend to not like groups most of the time.
I also know that I could be mistaken. When I first read about AS, so much of it just clicked for me. But then I had seen portrayals of Autism/AS before in the media, and while, of course, knowing they were exaggerated, I still thought that there must be some elements which were constant. For instance, lack of or limited eye contact. Stimming or other movements etc.
And I thought, well, I can look people in the eye......so what does that mean? Part of my problem is that when I think back on my life, especially my childhood, it's so hard for me to think of a clear line of demarcation that says "normal" behavior, and some transition, to how I've pretty much always been. A lot of the traumatic things that happened to me, began when people would just start observing a child's forthcoming personality, etc.
One thing I do remember is when I entered pre-k at age 3. I could talk and was talking. In fact, my mother referred to me as "motor mouth", and would chide me for interrupting her. I was raised as an only child, since my half brother is 18 years older than I am, and was in the military.
But when I went to pre-k, I was completely non-verbal in the class. My teachers thought that I was deaf. I remember after about 3 days or so of me not talking, they asked my mother when she picked me up if I had hearing problems. They said they could tell that I was smart from answers that I printed on paper. My mother looked puzzled and laughed, and said, "Of course, she can talk." She had me rattle off a few things, to their surprise. Although by this time the class had pretty much gone home.
She never really asked me why I stopped speaking. I remember knowing even then that I was very different from the rest of the class, even though later I would eventually count identical twin sisters as my "friends." I figured if I didn't speak, that I couldn't be outed as different. Being thought of as deaf would have been better than being "weird."
And if it hadn't been for their intervention, I often wonder how long I would have gone on not speaking.
The thing that was most striking was that as talkative as I was perceived to be at home, I felt really comfortable being non-verbal. And even though no one had harassed me, I still "felt" different. Although, I must add, that I am biracial, and was the whitest looking child in a room full of black students. But I grew up in the black community, however, in a neighborhood of older people. So, I don't know if seeing my age peers made me freak out or what.
And I could come up with numerous other examples. Strange attachments to inanimate objects, such as shoe horns and other items, getting older and refusing to come from under the covers out of my room to see friends of my mother or family members that I knew and got along with. Insistence on rule following.
Sometimes though, I wonder if, regardless of an "official" diagnosis, if what matters is treating symptoms or behaviors that cause a problem, and not treating what is benign/beneficial is what counts the most? Any label is just that, a category that makes it easier to process certain things.
But how do you deal with that which you have no label for? I also wonder how being woman affects how my past/present behavior is perceived.
And in my offline life, what little of it there is, I don't really come across other people who share a fraction of my experiences most of the time. So, I think I am going to pursue finding out a diagnosis. I suppose I'm just tired after doctor after doctor for 6 or 7 years nearly.

Welcome to the Forum Song-Without-Words. Deep empathy for your story and I hope that the brighter times in your life will arrive soon!

Rikki

Learning2Survive: I don't take it as racist. And I didn't have the best system to support me and/or have mentors. And the school system did SUCK. The only way you got a good education is to go to a "white" public school, self-segregation was/is extremely common in New Orleans for various reasons. Or you could go to an expensive private school. Even among paroachial schools that did good jobs across racial boundaries sometimes, there were massive cultural differences between minority and mostly non-minority schools.
With that being said,however, even taking into account the parts of my harassment that were racially/culturally based specifically in black American and New Orleans culture, much of it was the stuff that all kinds of people, in general, go through all over.
I went through something similar to that case that was in the news a few months back, being forced to stand in front of the class and be told what a horrible, worthless person I was. Except that instead of being 5, I was 11.
And most of the comments from the students were about intelligence, personality characteristics, not connecting with my peers, and less about skin color itself.
Even when attending my arts highschool, which was an amazing school, and sort of a safe haven for anyone, including teachers, who were different, I was still an outcast there. Not in the same ways as in other schools and situations, and not violently, but noticeably so. It was then that I realized that even among the usual outcast groups-nerds, geeks, artists, whoever......that I was still on the periphery.
And thank you audioeyes.
The thing is, I wasn't looking for mentors most of the time. I was one of those people who instead of embracing peer pressure, embraced the opposite so vigilantly. For instance, I told on an entire class of about 30 students for cheating on a test. They all threatened to beat me up after school, but luckily they didn't. I was some odd combination of incredibly opinionated, yet terrified. If it came to talking about personal feelings, I couldn't do it. I was seen at some sort of robot at best, and years before Columbine and the like, people thought that I was crazy and would blow up the school on the other hand. I never threatened to blow up the school, by the way, but people just thought I was insane. I even fought back against the bullies, and unlike in the movies, they didn't leave me alone.
Even when I did make a friend or two, they would move on. Apparently rambling on about plate tetonics isn't endearing.....I couldn't go up to someone and say hey, I want to play that game, or can we hang out, or whatever it is that people say. But I could tell the president of the U.S. f-off, so to speak.
As usual, it's hard for me to really decipher the whole nature/nuture thing. There are so many variables.

welcome to wp

Thank you Millie.
Learning...don't worry about tact, that's not apart of my vocabulary. New Orleans in some ways was a piece of crap, but so are many other urban environments, for many of the same reasons. This country as a whole has massive social problems with diverse but common causes. Even with those problems, I miss New Orleans a lot. Maybe it's the kind of place you have to live in to understand.....even with its many many problems, underneath the exterior and the images that the media shows, and the worst type of people that they interview and claim to represent us, there really was a unique and vibrant culture. I'm a pretty cynical person, and after having been exiled since 05.....I haven't found a place in the world like it, in the good ways, especially. I've also found that a lot of issues that I thought belonged to New Orleans or the South were really insidious elsewhere, and worse in some ways, particularly in the Northeast.
Anyhow, I don't have a problem acknowledging those issues. But I suppose I hear so many people trash talking my hometown.......and well, in some weird way, if New Orleans was a person, metaphorically speaking, it has a lot of non-NT characteristics. The blessing and curse of that city was its resistance to change.
On the other hand, my mother was a single parent with crappy jobs, so I know all about inadequate care structures.
Maybe home isn't where the heart is, but where the head is. I've always had a whole world in my mind, at least.

Welcome and good luck with your future. To echo the general sentiment that has been express here, you're not alone in your story. I've only been here a very short time myself, but already I have found that, while variations both major and minor are to be expected, most of our stories have at their hearts the same thematic kernel, the same essence, for lack of a better word.

It's difficult to sift through what our environments and circumstances contribute and what we simply *are*, but in the end it matters little. Nature and nurture are a complex interaction that constantly change and modify the effects of each other. We are who we are, and we do what we do.

A lot of the issues you talk about aren't very prevalent where I'm from, but it isn't really due to progressive attitudes. The combination of relative isolation and the laid back nature of the culture make it so that these kinds of things aren't even factored in, the downside being that they aren't addressed at all. The people as a whole are generally accepting of anything, albeit very set in their ways about things they will not accept, however this still says nothing for individuals or small groups, so it's really a mixed blessing.

In the end, what I'm trying to get across here is that as wildly varied our background circumstances and environments are, there's still something there that causes us to have similar life experiences along this particular wavelength, and you're among friends here.