Sudden Insight (Do I have ASD?)

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So... I spent my whole life being abnormal. You know, that's just how it is. It seemed okay at the time.

So.. I spent my infancy not crying. -(for food, for attention, for anything really)
However, I learned how to talk at a very young age. As in not just repeating what I've heard.
And my IQ is too high for it to matter.
I was mimicing other people's accents before I knew what an accent WAS. (it took me a long time to grasp the idea that people have a different way of communicating english without speaking another langauge)

I spent the majority of my very early (social) childhood in a state of constant shock and fear, along with a great deal of disgust. I wasn't an angel by any means. But the idea that someone could hurt someone else soley for their own personal gain was the most allien thought that I've ever had to deal with. It took years. Conversly though, because I tended to assume the good in people before any other obvious social signal of the contrary would register to me, I was able to get on people's good sides pretty easily, as long as they were not feeling particularly sadistic that day.

I had a long term relationship for about.. 6 years. That I finally ended because it was eating me up worse than being single. (we lived cross country from one another, yes, the majority of our relationship was in typed words) During that relationship she admitted to me that she was ASD, and thought that I was too.

So... psychaitrists. I've never been diagnosed with aspburgers or ASD. I watched a lot of television. I mean a lot. I mean I watched hbo back when star wars was still showing pretty regularly (before any remakes). I don't remember any of it now, with some small exceptions (usually scenes and lines that struck a cord) but I did learn very quickly how to 'pretend normalcy'. Basically because that's the only way I ever figured out how to communicate with normal people.

That is to say, if I wanted to accomplish something and I could not do it myself, I had to come up with convoluted ways of expressing simple things.

I have never told a soul about any of this. why should I? I hated listening to people complain and complain and complain throughout my education. About everything. Usually about stuff that was their own fault. IE - they complain to people about how they act in the hope that they can control this person into doing as they wish. I find that this is how most normal people communicate on a regular basis actually. They just don't realize it. You learn a lot when you speak very little and pay attention to everything, just not for any extended period of time. It's okay, snippets are all you need.

Well.. yeah. so. I'm 26 now. will be in a approx. 2 days. And.. yeah.

So.. I've spent the better part of my life trying to figure myself out. when not distracting myself from that oh so important thing (<--sarcasm). And.. believing whole-heartedly that there was nothing wrong with me. That everything that happened was a normal part of life. Of growing up. why? well, I really didn't have any direct comparison. single child. A few very very close friends, of whom today only 1 lasts. (and most of my current friends are falling away..)

And you know I stumbled upon a realization. My problem is that after college (I skimped by with a BA in liberal arts by going to a very accomidating school that unfortunately I was not prepared to take advantage of) I really.. really don't understand what I'm supposed to do next.

I mean seriously. Get a job, get married, have offspring, yadda yadda. That's easy. But .. how do you do that exactly? Why? I seriously spend hours agonizing over my resume before I turn it in to anyone. Guess how many responses i've gotten? In the 3 years i've been applying for jobs, I've actually had .. 4 now? The 4th one I got by being educated in a very small town with very few educated individuals. I had to leave that one, however, due to personal matters. ( a failed engagment where I trusted and made myself financially co-dependent with someone else who... didn't know what they were getting into with me until it was too late)

what I mean is is that I feel absolutely no motivation to continue the human game. Is it possible for ASD to go into remission and come back? That's probably not what happened. Honestly looking back it seems more like I was trying very very very very hard to be normal. Actually that's kinda how it is. The older I get, the less and less energy I am able to put into pretending EVERYTHING. Honestly I get by usually by the fact that most people would listen to my words and not pay any attention whatsoever to what I am doing or how I'm doing it or whatever. That is to say, I don't make a lot of eye contact. my gestures are often completely wrong/bad timing/etc. I sometimes make things negative for no good reason. These slips really didn't start until I was in a very stressful life situation that I will not go into details about, however it involved first imprisonment, and then 3 (2 consecutive) stays at a mental hospital. (----ie a place for killing people's minds without killing their bodies)

blah, it's so hard to stay focused. i coud also say that I had a habbit of appologizing pretty much constantly for social mistakes for a very long time. As in I would sling out the word sorry so often that it lost all meaning. It still kinda has.. but anyway

So.. yeah. at this point, i'm quite litterally falling apart. I recently moved to cinci Oh and honestly, I barely leave the house. It's very difficult for me to even think about what to do outside of the house unless there's people I know doing something, or something that I specifically want. >.... this is not how I want or choose to live my life. It's what happens. It's.. what ..

I probably never got diagnosed OCD because I can't fixate. Honestly, my earliest memories of things that I 'wanted'.. were things that other people had or wanted. It's pretty sad when you realize that nothing that you do is 'working' for you anymore. It's especailly bad when you realize that that only reason you enjoyed them in the first place was because of the social groups that they involved you in as a child.

I can't play MMORPGs, even though rpgs were/are my favorite. You know why? People. I can't stand the people involved. the social atmosphere litterally makes me sick and stressed. (not allll the people.. of course I'd find a select group of people.. yeah) ammusing isn't it?

Since just about every way of diagnosing ASD is for children, exactly how do you know if you have it?

At this point, having read the blogs of other 'offical' ASD people, I notice one thing more than anything else. They all speak almost exactly the same way I do. Convoluted with a lot of details interspersed with musings that would be talking to yourself had you not written it in journal form.

Some are more organized, some less, but the general flow is the same.

Hmm.. what else.. Oh, I often don't eat, sleep, or do anything that is required to take care of my body for extended periods of time. I honestly just don't notice sometimes that I missed.. a meal? sleeping? whatever. I used to catch myself not breathing for extended periods of time, or very shallowly if at all, but that kinda creeped me out so I stopped noticing. (it still happens)

So... what I'm noticing now is that eveything that used to occupy my attention and keep me.... whatever. happy isn't the word. Sedated, I suppose. None of those things are working anymore. That is to say that ... I've never discovered my talent. Or .. whatever. I can't draw worth a wooden nickel without serious relaxation and a space of mind that I have trouble accessing at will. And then, I usually have no control over what image I come up with. visual art is not my thing.

Numbers are easy. And simple. And complete in and of themselves as long as you don't assume too much based on numbers that do not represent what you think they do. They also bore the everloving crap out of me.

So... I guess that's enough.

Question 1: do I have ASD? I am not asking for a proffessional oppinion here, I'm asking for a diagnosis based on personal understanding from those who know they have it.

Question 2: Suicide is not an option because I don't believe in it. What the hell do you do once you realize that you really have no desire to do anything other than to change? Or.. rather, what do you do when you realize that you have no idea what to do? and you're 26 year old white male who's expected to be old enough and mature enough to figure this crap out for himself? I would say that I'm panicing about this, but i've been there and done that part of this ... thing. It's not helping and really I just don't have the energy or the will to panic at this point. Either I'll end up destitute and i'll never have to worry about living a normal life again (or a long one for that matter)

Question 3: Hope is something i've had to discard in place of reality many, many times. I don't even want to get into how many other people's ideas I've tried to take to heart within myself in an effort to 'find' myself. that is to say, I finally feel something other than just numb all the time just be realizing that there might actually be some way of.. communicating what I always considered to be a lack of self-motiviation.

I just realized that I spent my entire life adopting other people's ideas/desires.. even lifestyles as my own in an effort to .... not be alone. I've felt more alone than any human being should ever ever have to feel. EVER. That's not meant as a cry for pitty, but an underlying statement of possible nerosis that may have nothing to do with ASD.

Did I mention that I fake just about every physical cue that I'm supposed to give? And just about every interaction that isn't with someone I trust? (oh, how small that number grows)

I don't like admitting that I need help. (HELP!! !!) n.n;;

Just being anti social or disliking the rest of humanity doesn't mean you have AS. Your early acquisition of language is puzzling..slight speech delays are more in line with AS. You say you cannot "fixate"? In my case one of the determining factors in the dx were my "fixations" , narrow, single subject compulsions ( along with difficulties with socialization and certain motor issues ).

You are obviously tortured, but I don't think you have AS.

But I'm no expert...

But difficulty focusing is an aspect of it (although not on the diagnostic list). I don't know, it didn't sound like he doesn't fixate, just that he doesn't fixate on anything right now. I can relate to that. All my childhood, teenage, and early 20s obsessions have kind of burnt themselves out, and I don't have anything in that space right now. I don't really fixate on anything. I'd assume that something else will pop up eventually, but for those who cycle through obsessions, it wouldn't surprise me if some find themselves without one at certain junctures in their lives.
I don't know if he's got AS, I'd go to a professional, but I wouldn't rule it out.

Honest replies, thank god.

See, that's really the issue I'm trying to deal with. At what point are you ASD, and at what point are you just 'a messed up' person? At what point is diverse ways of thinking a disorder?

I honestly thought taking 20 years to figure out that 'everyone is naturally good natured inside' is not actually how the world is was part of it.

Also.. like... I can profile people. Intellectually. And I have a pretty good sucess rate with limited details. But.. I couldn't for the life of me interact with said person based on any of that information. UNLESS I was going to manipulate them.. but I go out of my way NOT to do that because it causes more problems than it solves, usually.

I guess that's part of it to. I don't actually hate anyone. I don't think I have that strenghth of emotion right now. My words may have seemed full of agnst, and they were.. but it wasn't directed at anyone or anything in particular. That's part of the problem. Whereas I can understand how people have emotions, I don't actually feel the same ones anyone else does. It took me years of failure to get to the point that I could talk to someone about .... well, emotional things and have it make sense to them. my vocabulary is huge because that's all that i had to work with. I mean.. generally AS is associated with speach difficulties, but usually there's a manifestation of superiour skill in other forms of commuication which compensate.. the parts of the brain that are involved with communication handle more than just speach..

basically, what some people are calling 'high' autism or whatever, the idea of being intenectually gifted but socially ... braindead? yeah. That would be me. I've probably watched a billion different scenarios of human interaction, but i have yet to be able to form a clear sentence if someone is putting me down. Not until it's far to late to respond and not just look like a fool.

Let's see.. motor cordination. I have minor and brief fits of diseaness.. I walk into things a LOT. and by things I mean like.. it's common for me to have bruises that I can't explain if I spend any length of time being physically active in enclosed spaces. I don't generally walk into buildings, but yeah. I've never been able to play a sport either. Never been able to move and think at the same speed required for .. say, dribbling a basketball and paying attention to the other players.. or.. dribbling a soccer ball.. or.. etc. Baseball was out of the question. I only ever hit a pitch when the pitcher was feeling kind, so to speak. I also just wasn't able to correlated complicated physical movements like that. er, co-ordinate.

I got into video games.. and well, I kinda obsessed with them long enough to learn how to have hand/eye coordination. I became a fast typist by obessing over the internet for a good long time. I became so/so at writing fiction by forcing it out of me. (though, when even I go back and read it, it's about as interesting as a dead fly in a flytrap.. but it looks right!) I learned how to do a couple of martial arts maneuvers because... you guessed it, i wouldn't put one excersize down until I mastered it. (and subsequently always fell far, far behind, got discouraged.. yeah)

Other things.. self stimulation. Yea.. I basically don't feel anything when other people touch my body... as in like they don't register as anything other than physical preasure... like not even any of the women I've been with. (and yes, I experimented with men, and no, it didn't work for me).. though I guess it's nice that I can feel revulsion from other people.. though the revulsion was still more.. mental than physical. I didn't feel anything that way either. but at least with women, I don't get an upset stomach within seconds of semi-intimate contact. so.. yes. I touch myself for comfort cause no one else can.

I've always been like that. It's not that I don't feel pain. I notice just about every scratch I get... but, for example, if a dog bites my leg while i'm riding my bike and takes a significant chunk out of the flesh, and I don't notice or even start crying till my mother started panicing when I rode the bike back to the house and went inside to do something else. As far as I was concerned, it never happened.. up until someone else noticed it.

The list goes on and on. Incidents, generally. The other thing is, more of these incidents would have clued me in at a younger age, but I've probably spent about 15 of 26 years aboslutely alone. And I mean that as in time spent interacting socially... that/s a really rough estimate. I gerally didn't speak much in school, so basically all of my social interaction has come from enough people for me to count on one hand... well, other than the vast number of incidents of being ridiculed and shunned, but I really don't count that in this estimate as time spent not alone.

I frequently have thoughts/ideas that I have yet to find any way to communicate to another human being. I can read just about any english word and understand it, if not make enough sense of it for it not to matter.... but how do you describe the sensation of holding a physical object and feeling it as an extension of yourself? Not describing the act of it happening, but the sensation? better yet, how do you communicate the logic of sensation when most people don't even talk about their physical senses unless food/sex/drugs are involved?

are these not the symptoms of 'mild autism' or 'Asperger's' or 'high-function autism'?

I should itterate too that I used to hate people for not ... understanding everything the way I can. For 'being ignorant'. And then i realized one day that most people are only as ignorant as they were taught to be. and since then, i've found it very hard to 'hate' anyone. Even people who do me wrong. For every child who treated me like s**t in school, there's a whole lifetime of self-defeating behavior that they'll have to deal with, or miss out on a billion and one opportunities. Its kind of hard to hate someone who's only crime was having terrible or overworked or miss-informed parents. or getting shafted by genetics or whatever.

I could go through a list of the different 'social norms' i tried to adopt as my own. I got so good at it that I could convince myself of my own self-deceptions. (very very very bad)

I took a good, hard, honest look at myself. And honestly, while i don't know from clinical opinion that I have this issue, from comparing myself to many, many others diagnosed.. yeah. If I don't have the disorder, then I have so many of the traits that I'd like to donate myself to science on the basis that if my problem isn't as ... semi-perminent as a developemental problem caused by irregular brain formation, then the way my brain is disrupted could give a decent research some insight into the brain mechanics that are linked to the psychological disorder.

I plan to try to find a way to see someone about this in the future, however I have no insurance, and I have just enough money to survive here one more month before I'm completely broke unless I find a job so.. yeah. i'm sure I can find one. It's a matter of dealing with the intense and distracting ... behavioral issues that I can't seem to beat with willpower alone.

I appreciate the oppinions. Please note that I have no intention whatsoever of starting an argument about the various 'levels' of ASD. I'm not here asking for pity, or hand outs, or whatever. I'm just looking for comparitive opinions about my situations vs. (yours?)