I'm crazy. Always have been.

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Even when I was little kid. Crazy. Couldn't get with the picture, was always somewhere else. School? You've got to be kidding. Daddy drank, Mommy took pills. Typical American family, except that I was crazy. Getting into playing a musical instrument was a huge relief, and I quit school as soon as I was old enough. Moved to the big city and started being a professional musican. But I was still crazy.
Problems, problems. What the hell are all these people talking about? Can't they see that it's so obvious? No they can't.
Drugs and alcohol. The life of a musican! Chasing after every skirt that hangs out in a bar. Why is everyone so pissed off? On and on. Then, a gun. Lucky for me there was only one bullet and I didn't keep pulling the trigger. Now comes the parade of psychiatrists. Oh brother.
Got married. A disaster, and this time it wasn't all my fault. Single again for awhile. Then the real thing came into my life. But it wasn't going to be smooth sailing, because I was still crazy. Done with the drugs and booze, but still nuts. She thought it was just my artistic whatever-you-call-it. But then it went way bad and she threw me out. Back to another psychiatrist, this time because I was in despair, I mean cosmic despair. The moron gives me Prozac and enough sedatives to kill myself, which I promptly tried to do.
Two weeks in a mental institution. Lovely place. But I met a doctor there who figured out what was wrong with me. That's right, Asperger's. As he explained it I felt as though my entire life was finally coming into focus. So that's it!
Got back with my wife. Started taking all the pills. Therapy. It's tiring just writing this.
Now I know what I have to do, and what I have to avoid.
I'm still a musician, still married and still crazy. I've lost a lot of "friends" but I have to be convinced that they weren't really friends in the first place. I still behave very badly at times. And my mouth is capable of saying some pretty stupid things. Let's put it this way, I am no stranger to regret. But the way I look at it, it could have been a lot worse.

Understanding why -- really helps - good to hear things are slowly improving for you.

Your story sounds familiar. You're at the start of the next part of the journey. Welcome and enjoy.

Ah, see, you can't be that crazy. Sorry, that crazy, otherwise you wouldn't have known he was a moron for giving you all the pills. Welcome to the show...

I can connect with you very deeply Jazzguy.

The 'cloud of unknowing' was killing me. Now I feel validated and deeply affirmed in one fell swoop. I now have realistic expectations of myself and real acceptance.

I had been through therapy and 12 step process for over 14 years, all working within the context of abuse, trauma & 'adult child' stuff. Although this work alongside my Alexander Technique training gave me real tools to develop skills of self-awareness, there was a little leak in my boat, and in that leak I was drowning in existential misery at why I was unable to bare being with my little child and 'make it as a 'man' in the world.

My diagnoses was the missing link, the missing piece of the jigsaw. Hence I now look at the self-harming wounds on my arms, not as self-harming wounds at all, but as midwifery type marks that were part of the process of externalizing the internal world that I now can put a name to.

Welcome my friend. Welcome....

You MUST , but absolutely MUST read After the Tears. It will put your mind and soul at ease with some clear-minded compassion and enlightenment. Please say you will find the book.....

See, mental institutions CAN work. Even whilst in there there are however some limits <g>. Lots of us folk with AS tend to latch on to certain tunes or sometimes entire albums and for a while I decided that playing 'Dark Side of the Moon' was a good idea.

Again and again.

For hours.

Days at a time

Eventually one of the male nurses had a quiet word in my ear and hinted that unless I stopped this they would take away my cassette player. Apart from the track titled 'Brain Damage' there's also the spoken background dialog which includes the wonderful words "I know I'm mad, I've always been mad, I've been mad for f&$king years". This was therefore considered bad for the patients.

Ed Almos

Hi, it's nice to be welcomed by you all! We're the special ones, you know. Sometimes I love my asperger's.

Welcome to club crazy, brother. I'll toss in another your story is very much like my own. Not the same, but the huantingly similar, if you know what I mean. And as have others have mentioned, you're not alone in being "crazy" here; though, personally, I still prefer the term "mad".

May the fires of your madness temper you into a stronger person, and lend passion to your art.

Good fortune,

- Icarus the Mad

if you think you are crazy,t hen you are not.

Sorry to be the harbinger, etc

Hello, Jazzguy, and welcome.

For me it's The Wall crashing down that made visible the AS. Took me a while to work it out. S**t, all that time wasted. But got here , and SOOOO GLAD.

If by "mad" you mean "sane," then yes, I'll go along with that.

Welcome dude. I just got diagnosed myself. It made a lot of my life make a lot more sense. I'm a musician too btw. French horn, piano, guitar.

Well I'm pretty f*****g far from sane. I don't know for a fact that other people don't have the kinds of thoughts that assail me from time to time, but I'm pretty sure that they don't. And I KNOW that most people wouldn't behave the way I do sometimes, or shoot off their mouths the way I do sometimes. I also know that when I get stuck on a topic I bore the hell out of people in no time at all. I've gotten used to my wife's vacant gazes when I'm talking about jazz.
Do you dance? Now I can't dance worth a damn, but I've always danced by myself. It's really just moving around on the floor with my arms in the air, although I try to do it artfully. Makes me feel better. Don't need music. I love to dance for my cats. Of course they don't know what the hell I'm doing but that makes it even more funny. I've always had an understanding of animals, whatever that may mean.
Man it's a pretty cool life though. Jazz makes it a lot better. Haven't tried it? It's the perfect music for people with asperger's, trust me on that one. Go out and get some Thelonious Monk.
By the way, what is "Emu Egg?" It says that next to my user name. I know I didn't put it there. I'd rather not have anything there, but if I WAS going to put something there it wouldn't be "Emu Egg."