Hi I'm a new member here. My name is Tyler and I was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome at around the age of 7-8, I am now 17. As a child I always acted wierd, I would say whatever came to my mind, had obsessions and routines, didn't have empathy, couldn't maintain eye contact and various other oddities. From 1st to 5th grade I literally had no friends, I really didn't notice this untill 3rd grade. Upon discrovery I tryed to change my behavior, but this failed miserably, my peers still rejected me. For around 3 years after this I was very depressed and suicidial. Then my family moved and I promised myself to try and make friends, and I did. For about 2 years I had a group of people that I would reguraly hang out with, but as time went by we grew apart and I was back in the same situation as before, alone. Through 7th grade I was fairly dillusional, I thought I had many friends, but as it turned out I had none. I relized this in 8th grade and once again became depressed. It was at this time the primary obsession in my life, science evolved. I began to dabble in pyrotechnics and chemistry, making firecrackers, rockets, fountains and other experiments. As time went by I became even more depressed and subsequently my experiments became more "energetic". Each successful sythesis, test, or experiment gave me an adrenaline rush, these "experiments" could have easily injured or killed me if I made a mistake, but I didn't care. This went on for 2 or 3 years untill I had an accident with a highly corrisive acid. After quiting the experiments I hit rock bottom. It seemed like the only thing I could think of was suicide, I would fantasize about being killed in a freak accident. I eventually hauled myself out of this mindset. Fastforward a year and I've just started my junior year in High School. My mother must have noticed that I haden't done anything with anyone in the past 5 years so she made me see a psychologist. Even though I wanted to tell her how I really felt, I lied at every turn and after 5 or 6 sessions she said I was fine just shy and making improvements( which i wasn't).
Even now I still can't maintain eye contact, I'm not sure I have empathy, I can't start and keep conversations going. I'm not shy, I just don't speek. I've always been good hiding my true emotions. I have always had trouble sleeping. Sorry ,I couldn't figure how to work all that into the story, so I just threw it in.
I look forward to meeting some new people here.
-Tyler
27 Nov 2010, 6:29 pm
