I knew I was different. Also, Hello.

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I have a thousand things to say to say to you.

Perhaps I should begin with an outline as to how I got here.

I made a lot of noise as a kid using language until finally people yelling at me to shut up worked and I became shy and introverted.

I liked to make useless contraptions out metal, wood, solder, and nails. I disassembled electronic toys to see how they worked. I thought I was a robot. Kids teased me all the time and I had zero friends.

I had speech therapy and was put in 'special' math classes. I learned to read at an early age.

Later on I didn't know how to have a conversation, I realized. So I listened to other people and made maps in my head of how ideas connected between people and started to use that. It worked although I really just pretended to give a damn about what others were saying.

I quit school when I was 15. I was bored and went insane sitting inside all day long. 100% Fs. Figured I was stupid. People always told me as a child that I was gifted and until much later in life I figured they just said that because I was actually ret*d.

I did a lot of drugs. And then some more. Wasted away and narrowly escaped life imprisonment countless times due to the drug usage.

I accidentally got enrolled in college. Quit that to live out west for a year. Ended up back in school around 22 years old.

Discovered mathematics. Aced it. Got a BS in math with a minor is philosophy with straight As.

Discovered I don't fit in anywhere. Something was always not quite in sync with me. Was I stupid, a genius, a dreamer? Is everyone like this?

I started to realize that I wasn't anyone. I could fit in any social group, from ex-cons to math professors to artists and beyond. I changed who I was at least a dozen times, each time after getting bored with the charade I was playing at the moment.

I seriously started to wonder if I even had a true identity. Did everyone consciously choose who they were?

I had and still have a thousand hobbies. I'd discover something of interest, spend all of my time on it until I was a master and move on, collecting expert knowledge in an ever increasing array of subjects.

Everyone said I was quirky. Weird. Couldn't do this or that. But I did. Everything I could do I did better, faster, more efficiently. Once achieved, I lost interest and moved on. Just like that.

Who was I? Who am I? Chronically depressed and always looking from the outside in. Crowds bugged me, people wore me out, I couldn't stand certain smells and noises distracted me. Was I just a narcissist drug addict, an idiot savant, a normal guy who just happened to be lazy and have varying interests?

I couldn't understand. This led to more depression. I began to understand that maybe I could be capable of great things but just absolutely couldn't get myself to follow through that last 10% to make them worthwhile. Once I had figured out a plan and knew it could work I turned to solid lead and couldn't progress.

The sight of the myriad people on this planet who are incompetent but motivated wore on me. If only they had good ideas. If only I had the motivation.





I learned about Asperger's a year or two ago but discounted it. I thought I might have a touch of that which is just a touch. But an unexpected radio program got my attention and made me realize that so much more was due to this. I researched a bit more and realized that I wasn't just afflicted but perhaps a poster child for the condition.

This happened just a couple days ago. I've rethought my entire life now, through this lens. It all fits. It absolutely astounds me that so much of me, who I just considered quirky, is really just a product of being in this category. It's mind blowing.

I don't even know what to do now. I think I appeared somewhat normal before. I see you all trying to make yourselves fit in more but learning about this has had the opposite effect on me. I just want to sulk in my condition at this point. Give up. Give in. I see now the monster I have been fighting my entire life and want to lay down my sword and let it do to me what it will.

I'm probably just depressed as it is late February and that will do it for me. I'm... relieved, so relieved, that I'm not the only one. I really thought that I was the only one. For 29 years.

Welcome Quietbird!! !

I saw nobody responded a few pages back...sometimes we get zeroed in on certain threads and ignore the rest...also has a big deal to do with the time of day you post.

Anyway, so the revelation of your condition was a bit unwelcome. Some people resond like that. You are not the only one. I fought my condition and diagnosis my whole life because I thought moderate to severe PDD (pervasive developmental disorder) was the same as being "ret*d" but once I watched a temple grandin show and it all came to me that PDD was on the autism spectrum and there are high functioning autistics and I must be onre of them cause what Temple described was me in a nutshell. Then I was able to accept myself. Dont think of AS meaning something "wrong" with you. It is a neurological difference....you obvuiously have gifts that can help overshadow the curses.

As far as trying on all these roles to see where you fit. I had this problem in high school...I tried to be what everyone wanted me to be, until one day I realized that I did not know who I was so I spent the last 10 years discovering who I am. I started with my likes and dislikes and the finding what activities really made me happy or at least content...then I went to art school and learned thatr quirky is okay and to just accept my quirkiness....of course art school is full of quirky people so it was easier to do there than other settings like high school. Once I accepted my quirkiness, learning who I was and accepting myself was much easier.

My speacial interests is art of many forms and my longest lasting special interest is poetry which is always a mystery to me how it comes out of me like that. I am also a thiest which seems to be an endangered species here. If you need to talk just pm me. Sometimes I volunteer on here helping folks out with social issues...cant say much about executive function dysfuction as it seems to cripple me more than anything about AS.

anyway,
welcome and I hope you will be able to learn coping stratagies here so you dont have to just give up. Once you know what is going on, you can effectively deal with it. AS is not the end of the road of hope, cause there are coping stratagies that will make life easier.

Jojo

Welkome to WrongPlanet.

The WP Kink

bumping the thread up for you,


Jojo

Welcome to the club. Different path, me, from and to different places, but some definite similarities.

Glad you got here.

I'm 47 years. I was officially diagnosed two weeks ago. Like you, I'd ignored the facts for a long time - believed that I just had maybe a touch of Asp. But it turns out that it is well and truly in me and, I now know, in my family too. My father and both my siblings. Only my sister was diagnosed as a toddler: she is an extreme and non-functioning autistic. My father and brother remain undiagnosed and still have no idea. I've no intention of telling them, though, about themselves or even my own results. This is a discovery that they should make on their own. Now the tests for me are done, the results are in, and it's pretty mind-blowing and I feel alone. Like you.

Why did I bother to get the tests done now? Because life is very stressful, and I could feel all my coping mechanisms coming apart at the seams. I didn't even know I had "coping mechanisms", did not call them that, but now I recognize them as methods I had devised to help me to fit into a normal society. They still are coming apart at the seams now that I am post-diagnosis, and I still don't know what to do about about it all. But I do feel relieved to know the diagnosis. It means to me that there is a neurological hard-wiring difference between me and most of the rest of the world. There is an explanation for my behavior, and it's not just a mental thing. It's a physical brain thing, and perhaps Step 2 now will be to re-work some of those coping mechanisms knowing what I now know.

Good luck, Quietbird. I wish you the best of a new world.