Me and how I see Asperger's syndrome

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The other day I was looking at a Wikipedia article on the TV show "Bones". My girlfriend started me watching it and we're towards the end of the fourth season, the one with the Gormogon arc. I forget what I was actually looking up because I ended up stumbling across the Wiki on Zack Addy and found out he was the apprentice, which blew my mind AND ruined it for me. That's where I read about Asperger's syndrome.

Most of what I read on the Asperger's wiki applies or applied to me. My speech isn't fast, jerky, or loud, and I have amazing hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and balance. Outside of those inconsistencies, I suppose I could be defined as a typical Aspeger's case. However, I don't believe I have Asperger's syndrome. I'm here to tell you why.

I feel that if anyone is to understand this, I'll have to explain how I came to be who I am now. I can remember back to when I was somewhere between 1 1/2 and 2 years old. My earliest memory is of bouncing down a flight of green carpeted stairs on my bottom and my mother's mother yelling at me to stop because I'd get scoliosis. My parents took me to see an educator/tutor when I was two. She assessed me as being abnormally intelligent and I studied a number of things with her on a weekly basis. If you haven't been through it, I'm here to tell you that what you often see in movies is true - kids just want to be kids. There came a point where I didn't care about learning anything and just wanted to play, not that I knew how to express that verbally to the adults.

I suppose it was at that point when my tutor suggested that my parents put me in a private school. They didn't. They put me in a public school in the belief that I'd acquire better social skills there while still getting a good education. Unfortunately, we lived in a backwards town in New Jersey, heavily populated by people with low IQs and bad attitudes. Even if I had the capability, which I'll never know, I never had a prayer of fitting in at school. I was made to read by one-on-one with the teacher at the back of the classroom and left to go sit in a sixth-grade classroom to learn math. I was small as a child, and innocent - as perhaps all children start out. Although it still amazes me to this day, I tell you truly that my first-grade classmates reviled me and beat me almost daily during our recesses. The math teacher didn't like me any better than my fellow students and rather than educate me, he yelled at me frequently and eventually sent me out of his classroom.

In second grade, my mother came to me with worries about my grades. She said that I had A's and B's on my report card, but I was smart enough to get all A's. It was just an echo of my teacher's guidance, but it carried a little more weight coming from home. Aside from being ostracized by my classmates, I didn't understand the importance of grades at school. If I was interested in something, I got an A doing it; if I wasn't interested in it, I got a B - and that seemed just fine to me. But for my mother, I forced myself to get all A's on my next report card. I was only five, having started early, but I remember as clear as day when she said "All A's, that's very good, but you can do better." When I asked how I could do better, she said "What about A+'s", which of course is a grade you get on a paper or project and not a report card. And so, realizing (or mistakenly believing, there's no telling now) that nothing I did would be good enough, I gave up.

Towards the end of that school year, my father started beating me. I don't remember my first beatings or what they were about, and I don't know if it's important, but I suppose the original impetus was my poor school work. It was a completely ineffective way of getting results from me. However, that didn't stop him. Over the next few years, the spankings grew into true abuse - getting hit in the face so hard that it would go numb while I went spinning across a room and prolonged spanking sessions that would leave my rear bruised for days. not to mention the psychological abuse. He'd hurl every curse he could imagine at me and my siblings, tell us things designed to make us feel as insignificant and worthless as possible, set up timers before beatings to torture us mentally before he did physically, make me stand outside on our front porch with underwear on my head, and try to turn us all against one another by manipulation. My mother's mother and great-aunt, who lived with us, did nothing. My mother did not stop him, but consoled us often as though she was a saint who loved us. Eventually, she joined my father in abusing us.

I had no sense of self-worth and no idea what a normal life was supposed to be like. I never contemplated suicide even though I understood what it was, but I would sit in my room and stare at a wall for hours on end thinking about nothing, because reality was too painful for me to think about. Early on, I truly, seriously wondered if my parents were actually demons who were pretending to be human, and more than once I laid awake staring at my bedroom door expecting them to shed their disguises and come in as monsters and end my life. Later on, when I knew better, I truly, seriously wondered if perhaps I wasn't quite human. Human or not, I had the worst possible hygiene, no ability or desire to communicate with anyone socially, and neither the size nor the courage to defend myself from the ongoing abuse. As my classmates got older, they got more imaginative, and interspersed with beatings were humiliations like destroying or stealing my lunches, flushing parts of me in urinals or toilets, and so on. Please note that while my abuse at school continued until the seventh grade, from fourth grade on I was in an "Enrichment" class, which would correlate to Honors or Advanced now.

I woke up one morning in the seventh grade to the sound of my father beating my little brother and screaming that he was paying for my sins. There was something in that phrase that broke a dam in my mind. Where I'd spent years wondering about why this was happening, and what was going on in everyone's heads, it suddenly hit me that this was just sickness, and not only was there no proper or logical explanation for it, but it didn't matter what their problems were, what mattered were MY problems and MY survival. I called the lady who had tutored me at age two and told her that if she didn't help me change the situation, I was going to kill my father. I was either eleven or twelve at the time, and I fully meant it.

She asked my mother to see me, and although my mother came to me and told me that this woman could do nothing to change what was going on in our house, I went anyway. That lady introduced me to a psychologist, who directed me to my school guidance counselor, who told me that my situation wasn't that bad (LOL - I can laugh about it now), but put me in contact with DYFS, Division of Youth and Family Services. They set up a meeting at our house. A moron from DYFS sat us all down in our living room and asked "So, what's going on?". Everyone flatly denied knowing anything, of course. My mother and father out of cowardice, my sister and brother out of fear. But it was effective. I'd stood up to them, they'd been outed, their perceptions of their own power were gone, and perhaps there was some fear on their part - among other things, the idiot counselor asked how I planned on killing my father, and I explained that I knew where a gun of his was and that I would shoot him as he slept. Maybe that was the only thing DYFS did right. My father didn't talk to me for three months afterwards. Physical abuse stopped completely. Later on, as we got to communicating again, he tried threatening us occassionally but gave it up before long as everyone knew the threats were now empty. The sick manipulation in the house continued, but it was past the point where it could do any additional damage. After a while, you really HAVE heard it all.

I don't know if it's coincidence or not, but I hit my growth spurt at that exact same time. I was still thin, but now at a height of 6' 2". Whether it was my height or something less tangible that discouraged them, I don't know, but harrassment and abuse at school rapidly dwindled down to nothing. I was just a loner being left alone. I latched onto one kid who, although he wasn't really a friend to me, would hang out with me, and that gave me something of a social life. Or an escape, perhaps. I would waste every spare moment hanging out with someone playing basketball, playing video games, whatever I could do to get out of my house. From time to time people would give me positive encouragement, but I let it fall flat. Still, it made me slowly realize true and positive things about myself. I'd wonder at my potential, wonder at what I could be, what I could do, on and off. It was scary and it was unrealistic. It was also completely opposed to what I'd been taught, what had been beaten into me for years. In the ninth grade, my school principal asked me to submit to an IQ test. Based on the results, he offered to send me to the local community college for free as part of a special program they were starting up. He knew I was doing horrible in school and he knew I was smart enough to easily do very well, but he didn't know what the problem was. He thought I was bored. I turned his offer down.

I flunked my junior year, repeated it, then dropped out and passed the GED test. I went to work at one dead-end job after another, still with no idea what I was doing, what life was supposed to be like, or with a shred of a clue of how to move forward. At work, inevitably, although I was polite and "nice", I would not establish friendships with my co-workers, and they would in turn either openly mock me or talk about me "secretly", simply assuming things about me that weren't true and acting much like the classmates of my youth. I wondered why no one ever took the time or made the effort to get to know me, why everyone assumed things about me and acted like a-holes based on those assumptions instead of trying to find out what the truth of me really was, especially since I was a nice guy, but eventually I stopped wondering. No one I met acted any differently from the person before them, and I decided not to waste my own energy waiting or searching for someone who likely didn't exist. I turned further inward for my own protection. On the outside though, I became rock-hard. I'd fought back against childhood bullies and abusive parents and overcome them both, and I was scrappier, more resilient, and had a stronger will than those around me. It showed.

I continued living with my parents. I couldn't hold a job, I never saved money, and I really had no idea why I even should do either one of those things. I stole things, I vandalized, and that continued for some time until I stole a few dollars from one of my cousins during a visit to her house. I felt a knot deep in my stomach, and rationalized that if doing something made me feel that badly about myself, I shouldn't do it. Unfortunately, that stuck with me. To this day, I still have what can best be called a conscience. I make my decisions of right or wrong based on whether or not I think I can look at myself in a mirror without thinking any less of myself, and I hold myself to a pretty high standard - a feature not owned by many people I've ever met.

At the age of 28, I was still in the same situation and still had no idea how to get out of it, but my mental frustration had reached its boiling point. I couldn't stand being in that house anymore, couldn't stand being around my parents any longer, couldn't stand being a nobody and a nothing anymore. Through the years I got angry many times and confronted one or the other or both about our lives, but apparently their decision was to act as though none of it had ever happened, to deny abuse or misguidance or anything negative completely. That didn't help the situation, to say the least. I'd buried myself in books for a period of several years, reading all classic literature, mythology, psychology, that I could get my hands on. I memorized countless trivial facts, including entire sets of Trivial Pursuit cards. I felt like I was searching for something, probably understanding or an explanation, and the more knowledge I gained the more likely I'd reach it. When I heard about Ultima Online, which was a little less than two years after its release, I dropped the books and spent every waking moment playing that game. But something happened at 28. Although it probably goes without saying, I was still a virgin at this point. Talk about frustration.....

I gave up on Ultima (they changed the rules and screwed it up :/) and just started searching the internet. I came across an interesting forum where I spent a lot of time reading and writing, and through that forum came across the website of a girl who lived on the opposite end of the county from me. A beautiful, talented girl. I emailed here, flirted with her, got her phone number, lied to her about myself profusely, and made up my mind to go see her. Maybe it was just the anonymity of the internet that emboldened me enough to go after the sex I dearly craved, but maybe I also realized subconsciously what wouldn't come to the forefront of my mind for some time - this was a chance to start new, around new people, in a new place. Unfortunately, I had no money saved, no hope of saving money, and no means to get across the country or sustain myself when I got there. So I scammed money out of people. It's not hard when you're intelligent. What I said earlier about a conscience still holds true - but this was an exception. It was't right, but at the time it seemed like the only thing I could do. What I had to do.

I bought myself a new wardrobe and flew across the country with other people's money. I booked a flight and left from my childhood "friend"s house without even saying goodbye to my family. I met the model-class girl (I'm handsome, incidentally) and spent a year with her. I didn't work; I didn't have to. Instead, I lived. We travelled together and shopped and experienced new things of all sorts. If you haven't tried it yourself, let me tell you something - working is not living. That's not central to this post, but all the same - think about it.

When I got down to my last five thousand dollars, I decided it was time to cool off, get an apartment, and find a job. Because I am who I am, I carried all the money on me. That's an important fact. Two days after I made the decision to settle down, my girlfriend of a year asked me if she could hold the wad of cash. I told her yes, and she put it in her bra. Later that night when we were talking about where to go for dinner, she asked me if she'd given it back to me. She hadn't. Of course. No more money. I didn't accuse her of taking it, not even a month later after we'd broken up and she and her mother went to St. Croix. It was irrelevant, really. I was on the opposite coast from anyone I knew (not that I was great friends with anyone I knew on the other coast), I had no job, nowhere to stay, and I didn't have a dollar to my name. I also had unpaid speeding tickets which I could not now pay, which resulted in the suspension of my license, invalidity and expiration of my identification, and looming possibility of warrants for failure to pay or appear in court. In other words, a very, very bad spot to be in.

I made the acquaintance of an ex-con from California who now worked in a porn shop and pawned many valuable items to him so that I could stay in a $160 a week crack motel. I looked for a job or way to sustain myself, to no avail. When the money ran out, I was faced with the single hardest and most frightening thing I have ever had to do in my life: pack up everything I owned, which fit in one suitcase and a duffel bag, and drag it behind me down a very busy street one hundrded and sixteen blocks to a homeless shelter. I don't recommend you try it, but it was a life-changing experience. I'm sure of my strength, I'm sure of my will, and I'm sure that nothing I have to face from here on out will be as hard as what I've already tackled. As it turns out, I never spent a night in the shelter. I went there and got some free bus tickets, scammed a taxi driver, crashed at the apartment of someone I knew who wasn't in town at the time, ran an hour into town every day to look for a job and ran an hour back to that apartment, GOT a job, even without valid ID, continued running for some time, moved back into the motel and eventually in with my boss, went through a few more jobs and a few more women, switched houses several times, slept in my car for a two-week period at one point writing bad checks to grocery stores for food, did a lot more running to and fro and eventually, when I ran out of options, turned back to the opposite coast for assistance.

It didn't come from anywhere but my parents. My not-friend didn't help me out. My brother, besides still living with my parents and having many of the Asperger traits himself, turned out much like our father in many ways. My parents though, wanted to re-establish contact with me. I wanted to survive. So that's what I did. I took their money and took a bus to their house and stayed with them for a while. They hadn't changed much. Outbursts were few to non-existant, but their personalities and "beliefs" were the same. Very few people ever really do change themselves for the better. And I had reconciled myself with the belief that, like a gay man who says he should have been born as a woman, my father was a mad dog accidentally born as a human. I believe most, if not all criminals like him are. As much as it galled me, I endured the stay. A stronger person, I know that succeeding is defeating them and their legacy. My triumph is their failure. And to that end, I would play any game I needed to and beat them at it.

I'm now living in another state from them, with a woman I've dated for three years, lived with for two, and we have a two month old baby. I'm working a plain, mundane job but just got licensed to pursue a MUCH better career, and when she's fully recovered and starts working, I'll be able to make the most of it. I'm itching to start my own business so that I can live free again, and so my whole family can enjoy it, as I did for that one year a little less than a decade ago. This woman is amazing - socially incompetent, with true, honest-to-god feelings and a heart (how often those things go hand-in-hand), and she's helped me immensely in conquering my anger and bad attitude. She's nice enough to put up with and point out my major flaws, and I'm decent enough to try to conquer them.

With all that being laid out for you, I hope you realize that you still don't fully know all there is to know about me. You DO, however, know enough to understand what I'm going to say now. While I have no idea whether or not Asperger's syndrome can be inherited and present at birth or develop naturally, I know for a fact that it bears such similarity to my current condition that it is surely diagnosed in cases where it was not hereditary. Cases like my own. And it is for those people that I say, I don't believe you have a disease. So I don't befriend and easily communicate like "normal" people. Only an idiot would have to wonder why. And not only do I not consider most people not worth befriending (and only an idiot would have to wonder why), I also don't betray, belittle, and backstab like "normal" people. Why is it not considered a genetic fault or malfunction of the brain to bully weaker people, to lie, to talk about people behind their backs, to cheat on spouses, abuse positions of authority, and the list goes on and on? Good people overlook awkwardness or reservedness. They judge people based on their character, as I do. I don't care if someone has an unpleasant laugh or an annoying habit or can't spell worth a damn or they dress like Steve Urkel, as long as they're a good person. It is those people that are worth being friends with. People who cast senseless judgements on you, or talk about you, especially so-called "grown-ups", should go take a flying leap. That's reality. Going out of your way to try to fit in with people who should be disgusted with themselves on a daily basis is insane. The only time I make the effort is when it's to my own advantage, to help me move forward in life.

I'm brilliant, I have many talents, and I'm extremely skilled. I'm fast, coordinated, and good-looking. I have an incredible ability to concentrate fully on whatever I'm doing, and because of that I can become great (not good - GREAT) at virtually anything. Whether they'd like to hear it or not, I'm superior in many ways to almost everyone I meet. Yet, not only do I not flaunt it or belittle people because of it, but many of these inferior people either consider themselves to be infintely superior to me with no grounds for thinking so or they chafe against and resent those characteristics of mine that show through without my "showing them off". I don't assume people are a-holes, they just keep going out of their way to prove they are. Well, in a phrase - Tough s--t. I don't care what they think, I don't care about their fragile egos, and I don't care whether or not they like me. Socrates said "Know thyself", and I second that. If you look to other people to define you or for acceptance or understanding, you are doomed to a lifetime of disappointment. Maybe that's why some of you are here - because you're seeking a place to fit in, a definition of yourself, a niche. That's why I wrote this. I don't need anyone to tell me how smart I am. I know how smart I am. I don't need anyone to tell me how good a job I've done on something. I can see it for myself. I don't need anyone to validate me or my opinions.

So Wikipedia says "aspies" focus on studying what most people consider to be minutiae. #1 - Most people are idiots. What is considered to be average intelligence is dumb as all hell. #2 - We spend most of our time in our own heads because we not only have brains, but have been rejected repeatedly by the brainless public at large. That means we're better company to ourselves than the average moron. That's not a disease. That's life - for some of us.

Could I put on a show and associate with others in a fashion indistinguishable from someone who didn't grow up as I did? I've tried it. I can do it for a short while, but it turns out I don't have the energy or inclination to keep it up for very long. I don't like acting like someone I'm not to please someone else who can't touch the least part of me. Take me as I am or go to hell - that's the basic choice people have. As an fyi - whether you realize it or not, that's the choice everyone else gives you. How many people bend over backwards to try to understand where you're coming from or accept your differences? How many people go out of their way to make YOU feel interesting? Exactly. I make it very easy to be friends with me, but all the same, very few people can manage to do it. Because while I can accept other's flaws, quirks, or differences, they can't do the same back. Incidentally, that's probably a major contributor to the unbelievably high divorce rate in the U.S. :/

I'm not going to post again and I'm not even going to come back to the forum. I've spoken my piece. I hope that in doing so, I've shed some light on this issue or helped people come to terms in some way. A brief scan of the forum confirmed what I already knew before looking - many people came here looking for something and feel they've found it, and will rail against anyone challenging this system on general principle. That's not unique to this forum. No one anywhere likes to have the beliefs closest to their heart challenged. But I won't be here for you to rail against. That's not so much because I believe I'm infallible (although you can't exactly disprove my life...) but to deny you the chance to turn this into anger and drift away from my point. You'll have nothing but the bare truth of what I've written. Talk about it amongst yourselves. Before you do, I want to end this with some quotes that I find inspirational. They supported my own beliefs and helped me lift myself up.

Rocky Balboa
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Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that!


“I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand upon. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.” – John Wayne in The Shootist (1976)


Muhammad Ali
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At home I am a nice guy: but I don't want the world to know. Humble people, I've found, don't get very far.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want.

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

The Pursuit of Happyness
-------------------------------
Christopher Gardner: Hey. Don't ever let somebody tell you... You can't do something. Not even me. All right?

Christopher: All right.

Christopher Gardner: You got a dream... You gotta protect it. People can't do somethin' themselves, they wanna tell you you can't do it. If you want somethin', go get it. Period.

Mark Twain
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Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.


Friedrich Nietzsche
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Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.


Socrates
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Know Thyself

Wow, I can't believe I read all that. What's the point of posting once and just leaving? And yes, I realise I'm talking to no one right now.
Eh, some people have been so put down by the world that they need a community of people to relate to.

I sympathize. Probably yes, you'll probably never post again on this forum (shame, because you can truly speak your mind in a way that reads well), but I'm sure you'll check in a few times to see some of the responses you get. You might even be an elaborate troll, designed to trigger anger and furious responses (I'm on the fence on that one, your last paragraph about the railing reads like a subterfuge confession to actually being a troll). But what you've written is not that inflammatory, yes, you have a blunt arrogance that might rub some people the wrong way, but there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion, and most people here are very blunt anyways. I too am pretty great at any thing I put my mind to, I have great dexterity and balance and coordination, and I look pretty good. And my level of intelligence makes it hard to relate to most people. But I still think I have a lack when it comes to social graces, and places with lots of people, talking, making noise, tend to trigger my fight or flight reflex.
So, whatever your intention was, thanks for an interesting read, and a puzzling trail of clues as to your true identity (www.psyche.nu and Askelon).

Also I doubt very much you'll start a rail (never heard it called that before) session here.

Having had a childhood very similar to yours in many ways........and knowing your grand exit...

The only thing I ask, while shaking my head in disbelief.......is

amongst all that hate and defiance and "bugger the world for all its possession of morons".......

Do you actually love yourself?


“The words of truth are always paradoxical.” Lao Tzu.

and.......

“One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.” Lao Tzu

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