To be a bit of a narcissist for minute, I'd like to tell you a few things about myself. My life story, if you will. I'm 24 years old, and I heard about AS roughly three years ago, and felt that it so accurately described my various oddities and quirks that I have come to think of myself as having it. I have always had an awkward (though not tragically so) way of interacting in social settings that other people operate in with ease. Overall, I've come to appreciate my more Aspergian traits. My memory is extremely sharp, as is my eyesight. I learned to read very early, had a large vocabulary, and hyper-focused on anything that attracted my interest. If something caught my attention, I would learn everything there was to learn about it, and I still do. I read books about dinosaurs, birds, astronomy, any subject that caught my fancy. And I would give one-sided monologues on these things, just knowing that they would be as fascinated as I was. I was a "little professor" through and through.
Still, I was physically pretty clumsy, and found it very difficult to interact with children my age, who seemed to have no regard for order or discipline, the curs. It was, and still is, a stretch for me to sympathize with people in many cases. I have always been an honest person, brutally so in many cases. Some people are not quick to forgive a scathing comment, even less so when they know it is honest. Adults were impressed by my precise speech and knowledge of difficult subjects. Children seemed to think I was odd. Although it took me a very long time to become truly comfortable with people, I would not say that my childhood years were terribly difficult. This I credit to my brother and the show Power Rangers, which in a strange way got me and my brother interested in martial arts. We took karate classes together for years, and though he is a year and a half younger than I am, I was the one who latched on to him enough to be involved in social situations I might not have otherwise initiated. The social setting of karate helped me a great deal, and practicing martial arts helped me to become much less clumsy.
Basically, I think of myself as having AS, and I'm comfortable with it, but I don't want to have doubts about the terms I think of myself in. Is it true that self-diagnosis of AS is usually accurate, and would it be worth seeking an "official" diagnosis? I would like feedback from anyone who has been through a similar experience. Even just looking at some of the comments in these forums I see so many mentions of things I've dealt with myself, or tiny quirks that are similar to mine. Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks for reading!
Last edited by TonyTheTiger on 17 Dec 2009, 5:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
17 Dec 2009, 5:27 am
