I've stopped acting to fit in and need some help! (LONG)

Post Reply New Topic

I had a life that went fairly smoothly (i mean i had a few good friends, went to high school, in a break from college, played sports, can drive, had jobs, some experience with women intimately though no serious relationships yet as I only act for women) but there was always this nagging thought in my mind that something was wrong with me. I was able to compensate enough to cover up the AS but that was using up most of my brain power and to others I just came across as subpar socially and kind of stupid (I kept quiet most of the time because I realized that my social skills were not good and that it would invite jokes, comments if I opened my mouth-essentially damage control)...but I had all the symbols of a normal NT person...I unconsciously focused all my energy and effort into COMING ACROSS as normal - meaning I worked so hard to gather the symbols of a normal guy. tryin to wear nice clothes (i have no fashion sense), joining the football team, listening to hip hop, rap, mainstream music, smoking pot, drinking, body surfin and spearfishing, being able to drive, partying, talking about girls and how hot they are w/ other guys all that....but that was what I showed to the outside world. At home, away from my peers, I released my INNER NERD playing xbox, being on my computer for hours on end, reading Harry Potter, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Star Wars and Halo novels, researching random @$$ topics of interest like the history of Ancient Rome and Japan on the net for hours, practicing guitar/ukulele and researching, watching and thinking about football (the one thing from my outward persona that was interchangeable between the ‘hidden me’ and the Mike that I showed the world). From ages 1-19 I didnt know of my aspergers, i only found out about 2 years ago what aspergers is and i knew instantly that was what I have.

I’ve become comfortable with myself cuz I realized I was forcing myself to be social to impress others not to make myself happy. Ive been forcing my friendships till now by being a chameleon and liking the things they liked and acting the ways they did…and those people who I had forced friendships with think im batsh*t crazy or weird because Ive suddenly dropped my super social act due to depression- they think I may be a psycho (changing personality so quickly because my real personality is super reserved, quiet and peaceful) whereas in reality im just being myself…I realize what it must look like to them though so I understand..

..I think if I were to put my effort into acting I would make a GREAT actor since I’ve been doing it daily for years to the point where I actually believed I was the person I was acting as. My whole ordeal is the same thing as an actor who got so entangled with his character that he couldn't separate the identities until he broke down and realized that he was in fact just an actor not the character- sort of like how Heath Ledgers mental health declined after he played the Joker in the Dark Knight. I believe that he tried to be the Joker so hard that it did some mental damage. Im not saying he actually believed he was the joker, but rather by empathizing so much he got depressed over it/kinda and went a bit mad.

My parents were so accepting of me and my ways that they didn't percieve it as AS (i didnt display too many outward symptoms of it, it was mainly in my thought processes and some flat facial expression, though i learned to compensate expressions to some degree) and they forced 'normal kid' stuff on me like joining sports, going to malls and places where there are a lot of ppl as well as expected me to understand things like NT kids/guys do. I couldnt process things as fast as them or understand the world the way they did so I often threw tantrums and went into rages as I didn't see a point to many of the things they and other people did. I needed logic and being a young kid I didn't have enough knowledge of the world to make sense of it all. Im 20 and still don’t have enough knowledge of the world to make sense of it all, though its getting more and more concrete. I used to think the world was a good place as a kid, then having being emotionally hurt most of middle and high school I thought the world was a malevolent place filled with mean ppl, then recently in college I hit a middle ground and now accept that the world is not made of absolutes, there are good ppl and @$$holes everywhere and that you can’t calculate everything like I’d like to.

My dad is most likely AS as well, hes terribly awkward in interaction like I am and when he talks to me and other ppl it feels more like he's lecturing us/its one sided rather than a fluid exchange....growing up I hated that because it was like he was constantly telling me how to think and act...but I am realizing that I do the exact same thing with others (working to improve) ...not to mention he was only trying to help me in his way so I am more at ease with him now. my mom is NT but like i said she either failed to see any AS in me or she just accepted me the way i was. She got tired of my tantrums and meltdowns perceiving it as me being insolent, spoiled and unabe to control myself cuz I needed certain things to be a certain way for me to function...She started switching between being nice/normal when not stressed and being a complete b*tch to everyone in the house at the slightest stress or signs of things not going her way (we also had internal family probs of secret debt by my father). Together those problems overwhelmed her and she kind of lost her mind. She lashed out at me especially because I melted down a lot starting in middle -high school cuz I was trying so hard to be normal but couldn' t and couldnt understand why either. She developed some degree of Borderline personality disorder (undiagnosed) from all the emotional damage she suffered (shes a Japanese who moved to Hawaii for marriage but couldnt integrate into American society and thus felt completely alone and cut off ...on top of the internal family probs of secret debt which caused her to overload and blow up)...and the way she treated me in addition to the way I percieved myself as results of ways OTHER PPL treated me(inadaquate socially, overweight, ugly, stupid, unathletic) caused ME to develop Borderline personality disorder as well. Like mother like son...im my fathers AS and my mothers Borderline arggg.

Ive been reading some other peoples life stories on here and they sound fairly similar to mine. What have you guys changed in your life to be ‘more yourself’? Your success stories? I need some inspiration right now and any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
-tangomike

I think my tipping point was college - I knew something was different about me all along and I did get an official Dx in high school and I tried my hardest to fit in then - I dressed ghetto, listened to rap but I was still ostracized. In college, things got a little better. Now, at the university level/adulthood I have more latitude to express myself but I'm still trying hard to keep my aspieness in check for fear of scaring people away - but once I open up to people or vice versa I slowly show my true self and so far a few people rejected me but the ones who stick with me say I'm a good, honest person they would like to be around.

Dude, I think there's similarity between us in how we carry ourselves. I know at home I'm on the computer quite a bit looking up or reading up random facts, talking to people on a transit fans group I belong to or the car forums I belong to(Bob is the Oil Guy/ClubLexus), taking apart things, processing my pictures on iPhoto or Photoshop if I took my camera out, working on computers or solving issues with networks and crap like that. But at the same time I'm forced to put on a facade in public - the people I have no to little problem communicating to are people I don't want to be seen with in public - which is especially true with the aspies I talked to so far. I do have some NT hobbies I truly enjoy but I'm deathly afraid to talk about my aspie hobbies - do people want to know about what engines a Boeing 777 or Airbus A320 series can be ordered with, how a BART or Muni train is controlled, who makes the engines and transmissions in a city's bus fleet, how a Prius propels itself, how the CLI on a Cisco router allows you to configure i and etc.

And I blame my parents too for raising me the way they did. I know my dad is on the autism spectrum and passed his aspie genes onto me. My mom is a typical apeshit Asian mom. They wouldn't let me go outside and play with the others. They had me stay at home with babysitters, or rather my now-dead aunt which weren't socially adept. And my parents only wanted me to socialize with other Asians - especially Cambodians. But even though I'm not a social butterfly, I saw Asians in school as square and meek, and I saw Cambodian kids as wannabe sluts or whores(girls) or wannabe thugs(guys).

_edit