Do i have Aspergers or not?

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Ok, this post is going to be long, so here it goes.

When i was around 4, i got a formal diagnosis for PDD-NOS (later changed to Aspergers). I was put in a special school for kids with learning differances for Pre K and Kindergarten. I only wore red keds up until i was 6 or 7 or so, when we couldnt find any of them anymore, i flipped s**t about having to wear other shoes. In school, i would do obsessive stuff like pick at glue for hours, wander around and talk to myself during recess.

After my Kindergarten year, my parents put me in a mainstream school, against the advise of everyone else. Well, in first grade, i carried the same problems i did at my old school. This time, kids would make fun of me and give me s**t. I would break down in class and wander around and talk to myself. Around Christmas time, they wanted to throw me out of the school, saying they couldnt handle me. My mother begged them to give me a second chance.

Well, they did, things got better, i solved the problem of getting made fun of, I was still a loner, but i got along well enough. I had no friends until 3rd grade. There i met my bestfriend trey, who respected my differances and I respected him regardless of what everyone else thought. Fourth grade was great, i began making friends with the rest of the class and i fit in at last. 5th grade was a great year, the teacher i had helped me out alot, i was great friends with all of the class.

After 5th grade, it was time for middle school. A whole new crowd. Well, things sucked, I was going through a depression and contemplated killing myself (Prozac may have contributed to this though). A small group of kids constantly made fun of me. I had no friends. Life just sucked. About halfway through sixth grade, I made friends with another social reject, who had teroutes. We were mainly good friends because of the common interest of the game Everquest, but it was nice to have someone to hang out with. Also, durring this time, i was being rediagnosed. I had my diagnosis changed from PDD-NOS, to mild aspergers. They told my parents that i would never make good eye contact and that i wouldnt amount to much of anything socialy. 7th grade, i began to make friends with some of the other classmates, but i still considered myself detached socialy. The kid who i was friends with in 6th grade would follow me around, and pretty much bug the s**t out of me. I let him be, since i didnt want to hurt his feelings by telling him to go away. I was also going through some trouble emotionaly, frustrated that i couldnt become good friends with anyone like i had in elementry school. Towards the end of 7th grades, i found a group of friends i was comftorable hanging around. Also, i finaly learned i had Aspergers after reading about in in time magazine, and saw that i matched alot of the symptoms. When I asked my parents about it, they told me I had it. It was quite enlightening, but at the same time shocking, i finaly knew that there was an underlying reason for all my problems.
8th grade was a great year socialy. The school accepted me for the most part and i had a close group of friends i could hang out with. Anyways, i eventualy graduated middle school and went to a boarding school in Virginia.

My freshman year was alright. I made some friends, squeezed by in school, even had a girlfriend from another school for a little while, but that ended badly from me not knowing what to do and some other people telling her bad things. Anyways they considered not re-enrolling me, due to some of the problems i caused, such as disregard for their rules like attending breakfast, going to bed, being on time, etc.

Now im a Softmore, so far im doing alright in my classes, not having the smae problems as last year. Anyways, the thing is, ive changed, i dont feel as if im differant anymore. I dont really display any symptoms of Aspergers or PDD. I dont have anymore obsessions, im quite social, and ive also lost some of my gifts, such as my amazing mental math abilities and memory. The few people who know of my diagnosis also seem to think that i dont have it. Im having self doubts about myself, my past and previos diagnosis tell me i have it, but how i live and act today says i dont. Im so confused, i just want to know the truth.

Welcome to this wonderful forum.
While I am not qualified to diagnose you and I haven't even been diagnosed myself, I think I can at least partially understand how you must feel. I actually had a fairly normal childhood, thanks mostly to the fact that I was blissfully ignorant of how different I really was. I also had a very NT older brother who I observed and emulated up until the time he left for college. This gave me lots of training in behaving acceptably and even being semi-popular. It was only later when I entered college and was confident enough to let the act go and really be myself that I started irritating people and eventually became socially awkward. My point is this: for someone with aspergers it is not impossible to fit in and learn to behave in an acceptable manner, especially considering the high level of intelligence some are blessed with. This does not equate to being neurotypical. The neurotypical aquire their social sensibilities in a totally different way from persons with aspergers. While someone with AS must work very hard at learning how to handle social interaction, I believe the neurotypical learn these skills almost subconciously.
I think after you read through some of the posts on this site you will be well equipped to decide for yourself if agree with your previous diagnoses.

That was very well said ware4 (and interesting)!

Even though I've been diagnosed by a doctor, who also had another doc do an independent consult who concurred with her diagnosis, I still wonder - what if I don't have Asperger's? I surely don't want to have it because I'm becoming aware of all the things in my life that it's affected and made difficult, before I even had a name for the source of my frustration. What If I'm simply socially maladroit? And, well, I've got some other quirks as well. But that could be the case and this diagnosis could just be the doctors' interpretation of what they saw as "presenting traits/ symptoms". Couldn't it? Couldn't I just be dorky and quirky and not aspie?

WillyWebbs, I'm not a doctor and even if I were I wouldn't try to officially dx anybody online but it could be that you're naturally recovering from AS and very early and quickly - if so that's great! But don't be too disappointed if the AS is still there. Just do as I do - always be aware of it, remember what works to overcome it and you'll have only half the problems you otherwise would.

Reminds me of my life about 11 years ago (back when I didn't know I have AS). My special interest is religion, and when I tried to break myself of it, trying to be more like other people, without my guide to follow the AS ironically got worse, not better. Now I understand. Lost a job because of it - the AS explains but doesn't excuse what those people did.

I say there's nothing wrong with having a crutch, especially when you know why you're using it.

Well I'm glad to see the first part, but as for "recovering from AS", what on earth are you talking about? I see you are self diagnosed (?) so I recommend strongly you get a proper diagnosis, not because I have any inherent faith in such a diagnosis (and especially not by the US method) but because it may expose you to some reality on the issue!

AS is not a disease that one may recover from (though the unfortunate fact that the DSVM uses morbidities to define AS, as opposed to Hans Asperger's observation that it was a simple case of not being aware of the social cues most people take for granted that prompted his papers, does tend to promote this view) but rather a different way of looking at life which, along with an indifference to the idiomatic speech and non-verbal cues normal people feel compelled to use for communication, creates problems with our relationships with others.

It's not a sickness or disability, it's just a difference!

I'd get a medical opinion if I was you

Definitely having it as a child, then more-or-less "growing out" of the symptoms that got you diagnosed in the first place? Hmmm... that sounds really familiar; that sounds like me. Even if you have successfully learned how to fit into the world, you will, on some level, always be a bit different in some fundamental ways.

They weren't handing out AS diagnoses when I was 4, but I'm fairly certain I would have gotten one had they been. I'm also fairly certain that, were I to go in today for a professional diagnosis, I wouldn't receive one because I am no longer sufficiently impaired enough.

How am I suppose to know? You need a professional