Greetings, fellow "Martian anthropoligists"! I don't know how previous searches for online AS resources failed to bring me here, but last week I met a WP member in person at an AS-related function a week ago, who told me about this site. I'm very hopeful about getting up to speed on this thing I've been dealing with my whole life but until last summer, didn't know its name.
I've gone through over 40 years of struggling with making connections to people, and sometimes making connections that served me very badly (people taking advantage of me, etc.), as well as never finding a real career niche and never having gotten anywhere with women. I've felt varying degrees of depression constantly since I was 8 years old, when I first became the target of school peers. And, worst of all, I never felt like I had any real perspective on why all this was, since I'm fairly intelligent and, say many, not bad looking. For some reason, all my supposed advantages have gotten me basically nowhere. I've wanted all the "normal" things that have ever seemed to me hopelessly out of reach.
Then last May I had a conversation with my mother about my early years, in which she revealed that she had me examined by a psychiatrist at age 3 on account of concerns of autism: suspicions he categorically dismissed because I didn't have ALL the signs. She was told, there are no degrees of autism; one either has it or not. (This was the late 60s, before anyone in the U.S. had a notion of "the spectrum" or conditions like Asperger's.) Only last year did she learn the contrary and so that's how the subject came up.
A few days later I wandered into a local indie bookstore-cafe, happened to find The Autism Sourcebook by Karen Siff Exkorn, and began reading its first section. I was astonished to see general descriptions that pretty much matched my childhood experiences. I felt as if I was reading my autobiography. There I learned of "the spectrum" and, when I got to the section describing Asperger's, I sensed I had at last found the key to understanding my whole life. Now I became convinced that I needed to find a specialist to get a formal diagnosis.
In early July, someone came into my line (I'm a retail cashier) wearing a T-shirt with an autism theme. I asked her about it, and she told me of a children's Asperger's activity group she runs
called "Unique Kids." She told me of the doctor her son sees and recommended me to him. I
was able to somehow get an appointment to start the diagnosis process, and a month later, I finished all the tests.
I'm diagnosed actually with HFA. The only reason it isn't technically Asperger's is that one of the DSM-IV criteria for the latter is the exhibition of normal speech development between ages 1-3, which I did not. (This in fact was one of my mother's compelling reasons for having me checked out in the late 60s.) But I was told that in practical terms of dealing with it henceforth, I can consider myself an Asperger's case. I'm also co-diagnosed with dysthymia, a persistent mid-grade depression, that I know I've had for 35 years. I spent the last months of 2008 just trying to let the reality of this diagnosis sink in, and now I'm looking to find ways to live with it.
I may be unique even around here, in that I'm a practicing Catholic of traditionalist persuasion, as I have been since age 20. (Until two years ago I was an avid partisan who kept himself strictly within that milieu; I was then persuaded of the wisdom to explore the broader world as I began sifting through long-held convictions to see which of them were worth retaining, a work still in progress.) I have a good grasp of a number of serious issues in religion, philosophy, culture, and politics ... an approach I'm now trying to bring to my understanding of AS and how it affects me. If I can build a circle of friends here as well, I'd be delighted.
Last edited by mcm15501 on 21 Feb 2009, 4:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.
19 Feb 2009, 12:12 pm
