Hi. I'm a 66-year-old retiree (mainly from civil service) with undiagnosed/self-diagnosed Asperger Syndrome. After suspecting this was the name for the assembly of behaviors and occasional problems I've experienced all my life, I took an Asperger screening test on the Web and scored 36 out of, I think, 42 points. On two other informal screening tests, I achieved perfect scores. I believe there's no doubt I'd be diagnosed if I went for a psychological opinion.
I'd never heard of Asperger Syndrome till I saw a "Nova" program about (mainly) teens with Asperger Syndrome quite a few years ago. I instantly identified with the young men and women being interviewed, in a way I never identify with most neurotypical people. I had a "comfortable" feeling about the interviewees, where I generally feel guarded and even very anxious when meeting new neurotypicals, and indifferent emotionally when I hear or see them interviewed. It felt like meeting previously unknown family members, except that I have never had much sense of identification with my family (which by now is non-existent).
I live alone, play classical guitar at a kind of just-above-intermediate level, have recently taken up steel-string guitar (I like Celtic music), have kept a journal for most of 40 years, and need to start again as I am having more and more frequent memory lapses, and the journal helps remind me of what's happened. Electroconvulsive therapy for severe depression in 1973 produced serious amnesia for my past, and my journal refreshed my memory--it was like reading about somebody else; I remembered almost nothing that I'd described in it.
I realize now that my two best friends in the past years--and I make friends with *great* difficulty--have been autistic. One unfortunately died in September 2000 and that was a great loss because we were really on the same wavelength. The Asperger friend I have now has far greater social friction problems than I do; I've been lucky in that area, but a friend of 33 years, and former coworker, when I explained Asperger's to him recently and told him I'm sure that describes me--told me he had often noticed peculiar behavior on my part, including rudeness and oblivion to others; I guess he'd been reluctant to point that out till that day. Now maybe he'll be more open about what he perceives, so that I can apologize or explain when necessary.
I am an experienced cyclist, but a small stroke in 2002 destroyed much of my sense of balance and I've been afraid to resume, though my physician wishes I would. It also messed up the hearing in my left ear; that has improved quite a bit but the pitch perception is still off--anywhere from an eighth to a half-tone high, depending on the day. Interesting, my brain compensates for that, so that listening to music with headphones I hear the same pitches in both ears. At first after the stroke music was just a mish-mash of jarring sounds, absolutely incomprehensible.
I cannot generally follow and sometimes cannot understand plots in movies and books, so I don't enjoy fiction as a rule. I can follow some well-written mystery novels and I get a general idea of what's going on in thriller-type movies, but I concentrate on the technical aspects (lighting, costume, camera angles, special effects, etc.) almost to total exclusion of "content."
I've written too much. I hope I can find some sense of belonging by coming to this forum now and then, and I also hope I can help somebody, even if it's just by affirming that I experience some of the same things you all do.
Thanks for reading!
01 Jan 2007, 4:47 pm
