My Story...hope you like it!

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My Story

My name is Jamie and I am an ordinary Taiwanese high school student who happens to have Asperger's, an IQ of 144 and a dash of bipolar disorder and ADHD.

I never found out until I read about Asperger's in the memoir of a gifted education teacher. Naturally I looked up this unfamiliar term on the Internet, and was astonished to find something that actually fit. All these years I've been an outsider, from Grade 1 to Grade 4 (when I was completely oblivious of my differences...my teachers weren't.) to Grades 5 and 6 (when I made some of my first superficial friends) until I reached Grade 7 which was when my best friend turned on me and made the entire class bully me to the point I transferred to another school.

Then, everything changed. I became a star in my class.

In an all-girls' class, tomboys like me were extremely popular (Even though I'm asexual). I'm funny and nice and had weird ideas, so everyone saw past or didn't notice the differences when interacting with me. Why? Because I rarely made any real connections. All I did was to tell joke after joke and hand out funny comic strips to pass around or do stunts. Funny how this was when I found out about Asperger's. I got really confused for a while, asked my mom to take me for evaluation.

Maybe I should tell you a little about my mother. She's a wonderful, loving mom, but she has very, very high expectations for me. She wants me to do my best in everything and get good results on tests. In my case, my mother told me to stop thinking and focus instead on the upcoming exam: the Basic Competence Test, an exam for all Taiwanese junior high school graduates to decide which high school/vocational school they should go to. Preparations for this exam take a lot of effort and time, because competition is fierce and everyone wants a spot at the “star” high schools. Both parents and kids are under extreme stress during this period of time, and can get quite touchy. After a lot of persuasion and explaining, she finally did take me to a psychiatrist.

But my visit to the psychiatrist didn’t go well. He is a nice guy who asked me if I wanted my mother present in the room. I told him yes, thinking that she might help the doctor find out what’s going on, but later discovered that her presence made me unable to tell some of the things that really bothered me and underplay many emotions, because I simply do not display a lot of feelings in front of anyone, so everyone assumed that I’m not a really sensitive person. He asked about my interests and I replied “Medicine and Asperger’s”, but I didn’t want to go any further. He was the expert, after all.

He also asked me if I did well in school/got along with the other kids, and I replied yes because that was true back then. My mother also said that it was I who brought up the AS question (I’m not sure about her exact intentions and they aren’t easy to guess). So we left and sat outside after a session without a conclusion. I had a ton of questions to ask but didn’t know if anyone could answer them, and my mom took me back to the room. This time I refused to enter, but I’m not sure why. A few minutes later, however, my mother tugged me back in. I asked the doctor if I had AS or not because I cannot comprehend his previous response which nothing. His answer was: “Yes, it seems like it”. What relief. But my adventure didn’t end just there. A few days later during an argument with my mother she screamed that the doctor was lying to me and that I was perfectly normal.

Normal? Normal was doing a project on Ebola virus in second grade simply because she loves the subject and read a great many books on it. Normal was she, who wandered all around the school alone at recess while the other kids played ball. Normal was being the last one picked for soccer despite being one of the best players in the class. Normal was…throwing a pencil case to the ground again after dropping it to the ground and the teacher yelled at me to “Do it again”. Normal was being given the silent treatment by my single best friend, then bullied by the entire class. Normal was clowning around to fit into a new school then getting depressed at night, not knowing who I am.

Now, two years after my initial discovery of AS, I’m in high school. The BCT exam went well and I qualified for the best girls’ high school on the island. Here there are people who might not necessarily be Aspies, but still share my interests, strengths, and weaknesses. I’m not the popular clown anymore, nor am I the withdrawn recluse locked in my own world. I’m somewhere in between and it suits me (and my friends!) just fine. I still have quite a number of issues including grades, time management, mood highs and lows, and occasional social interaction issues, but I’ve gone from the misunderstood kid to someone who is happy enough to live her life vibrantly---I’m a Venture Scout, aspiring IBOer, and Youth Diplomat. I hope to go to medical school in two years, and maybe someday become an ASD specialist myself.

Self recognition is a problem for normal people much more so for people with AS, not to mention that most people with AS are far from social ideal norm and the fact that so man with AS are capable to fit themselves in that norm only increases the problem of self recognition ( paradoxically).

Impressive! Lots of luck with your future endeavors.

I think being told they can do, or at least try, anything is important for any child, whether NT or AS. Even if they fail, they will have had one more chance to find out what they are good at before they grow up, which is pretty important. I've seen a lot of parents who are afraid to take the training wheels off their six-year-olds' bicycles or let their kids anywhere near the kitchen when they are cooking, let alone help out... If it weren't for your mom, you could have ended up with parents who would have told you that books about viruses are too difficult for a second grader to read or that the Ebola virus is too terrible a subject for you to read about at that age... as an AS kid, it is a lot harder to adjust to the world after being sheltered from it.