Hi, I'm James and I'm 19 years old.
My journey with Autism/Aspergers started a few months back when a friend told me go to the Doctors for depression. I'd been feeling upset for years in school because of constant bullying and taunting from my peers (I stood out a lot especially earlier in my school career because I didn't like swearing, always kept my shirt tucked in, was very good at reading and academic subjects and was still interested in cartoons and not very knowledgeable about certain basic facts of human biological function). It got to a low point after spending two years in college not making any friends, skipping classes here and there and trying to get home as much as possible in breaks to avoid socialising, especially after I learned to drive, and then not doing well enough at A levels (I'm from the UK) to get into uni when all the friends I'd managed to accumulate up till then did. But I still had this one person in the area I knew and we started talking a lot because I had nowhere else to go (I was really used to closing off from my parents at this point so I couldn't speak to them).
Anyway she told me to go to the GP and he said that I displayed definite traits of someone on the Autistic Spectrum and has referred me for diagnosis. So here I am. The diagnosis is in mid-June. I'm not wholly certain of what the outcome will be, but I was encouraged when, after I explained to my Mum about going to the Doctors and being referred, so that I could get her to fill out the questionnaires on what I was like as a baby, she told me that she'd thought of getting me tested since I was about three years old, since at that age I'd started to withdraw into myself and stopped deriving enjoyment from socialising or going places. I definitely have issues with unfamiliar social situations, I've always been terrified of large parties or clubs, I've always had a limited circle of friends, I don't enjoy going on holidays, I eat the same meals every day apart from when my Mum forces me to eat roast. It would definitely help make some sense of my personality and the way I feel sometimes (I have a lot of anxiety and frustration which I find hard to verbalise to people). I suppose I'll find out in a couple of months.
More about me as a person: My main interest is music. I have a serious obsession with Heavy/Power/Speed metal bands like Fates Warning, Griffin, Liege Lord, Dio, Manilla Road etc. I also like classical music and 70's progressive rock. I play guitar in a Trad Doom band with a couple of other borderline Autistics who play Warhammer and love really old pulp fiction authors like R.E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. That is my only voluntary social activity at the moment. Apart from that I mostly just lie around at home, and occasionally give one on one guitar lessons to people I know for spare change. I also spend a lot of time on internet forums telling people the boring details of my life, but you probably worked that out already.
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Nihil humani a me alienum puto
09 Apr 2013, 6:12 pm
