Another noob thread, man, it feels good to be here.

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Well, first off, a great big hello to everyone here! This looks like an amazing forum and tons of info here, it's going to be a blast digging through all this info.

Ok, heres just a touch about myself:
24 years old, dropped out of High School, got a GED, went into military service at the age of 17. Celebrated my 18th, 19th, and 20th birthday overseas in the sandbox. Came home, let loose upon the world. I worked at several different jobs (wal mart toy manager, loss prevention, cable runner to name a few). I am now working at Microsoft, and have been for the last almost 3 years.

I really messed my life up, and only in the last year or so have I actually taken control and am now trying to stay under the radar. Major kudos to my great gf who stayed with me through all my extreme craziness. We have been together almost 5 years now, with ups and downs big time. When she did some research into this, she changed, for she said "oh my, that explains so so much".

After hearing something about the possibility of having Aspegers, I decided to do some investigative work. I cannot tell you how much I fit the bill. Everything from the childhood symptoms to the adult symptoms I exhibit in one way or another.

I am going to seek professional help, psycho therapy, whatever I need. I am hoping that this forum will have a huge part in my awakening if you will.

I am not looking at this as a bad thing. If I can somehow harness my accelerated learning curve, severe passion for PCs, and concentrate all at the right things, I believe I would greatly benefit from it. To be improved as well is my communication skills, lack of empathy, and social akwardness.

Anyways, that's about it for now. I look forward to moving forward!

Welcome to WP!

I would love to hear some of your stories.

I would be happy to share some stories. What are you looking for? Revelations regarding my sudden realization? Military stories? General stories? I have no reserves when it comes to sharing, so please, just ask!

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Welcome home, QCD! Our life's stories are all here including up to the minute breaking news! Get comfy, kick your shoes off, lay back. Cruise. You are home, now.

Merle

I'm always interested in sandbox stories. I read Iraqi blogs from all perspectives and soldier blogs.

'Sup and welcome to the site. You'll like it here, trust me, we won't bite.

So, war stories, eh? I'm not big on joining the military myself, but my grandpa served during WWII and Vietnam and I always enjoyed listening to his tales, so I'm all ears.

*grabs a cold one*

LOL just kidding I'm not 21 yet.

Roxas

I'd give you some war stories, but I was diagnosed much earlier on and when I attempted to enlist with the Army during the height of the recruiting shortfall and Iraq war was not allowed to due to the diagnosis. Kind of a mixed thing. Would have been damned unpleasant s**t as I'd have been signing up for 11B, but it's something I really wanted to do.

I would also advocate including a neurologist in your appointment books and not just a psychiatrist if you want to start seeing professionals. My personal experience with professionals in the field have not been good with just a psychiatrist.

Good morning!
Wow, what a welcome, thanks everyone!! !!
Doublefrost, thanks for the advocation regarding Neurologist. I will do some research into who they are, what they do, and why they do it. The counselor I'm seeing now is a PTSD specialist, but barely knows what aspies is. I think I have to take care of the underlying issue first before I move on to PTSD.

Lets see, where to start. (this will lead into the good stuff, I promise )

I had a good upbringing, that came along with attempted suicide, ritalin, some kind of yellow pill that made me hyper, and then another to calm me down.
It wasn't that my parents did a bad job at all. They were and still are great, and have been married for almost 26 years. I was in another world, where everyone had bad thoughts, everyone was out to get me, I was not meeting up to their expectations, I wasn't following their agendas. I tried, oh did I try, but it was all to no avail. I was deemed one of the weird ones. The only reason I didn't get picked on was because I could whoop up on most of em. I was always the tallest kid in my class. That's where my parents got a 486 in like 93 or 94. Finally, something that responds logically that once I figure out how it works, it will respond the same way each time. People didn't do that.

I'm a big dude - 6'7", 220, I was that size when I was around 16, maybe a little skinnier and a little shorter. I was also into riding bmx bikes as well. I had everything going for me, except for grades. I was a straight a student until I got into HS. I dropped out of HS at the end of my junior year. In all classes, english, history, social studies, blah blah, I didn't do homework, I just paid attention in class, and aced tests. Too bad teachers didnt think much of it. Flunking every class, except for the computer classes, and math classes. I was in calculus in 9th grade, 2 computer classes, and had an average score of 130% (that's 30% higher than the highest grade you can get). My reasoning - I can look anything up online that I need to learn, why waste brain cycles and memory on stupid crap. (I admit I was wrong!)

My first relationship was in 8th grade, and it lasted 2 days. The longest relationship I had was about 2 months, and I had lots, my shortest was a couple hours. 9th and 10th I dated around 40 women. Didn't touch a single one of em, I was too nervous, never had any kind of interaction, whatever. End of 10th I met a girl who I would soon call fiance.

I got into a bike wreck a month after I met her. face planted on cement about 9 feet off ground, broke the fall with my face. I got some pretty good scarring, broken collarbone, both wrists, cracked vertebrae, nose was completely disconnected (bone, not skin). Needless to say, I had a much different outtake on life after that. Live today, for we may die tomorrow.

Wow, was I wrong.

Fast forward - dropped HS with 5 credits to my name by end of Junior year. Made a decision to go into military. I was going nowhere. Oh, and when I got my ged, I scored in the top 97% out of the state (WA).

Ok - on to the good stuff now!

I sign up to be a 54b - NBC specialist. 6 month basic training and AIT at Ft Leonard Wood, MO. All through basic and AIT, they were telling us were dragon soldiers, we use elements to fight, blah blah blah. They taught us some really cool stuff, radiation fallout calculations, how to make firewalls, decon, NBC recon, smoke screens, the works. After graduation, you know what the job entails? Taking care of a company (could be between 80 and 300) of soldiers' gas masks. Replacing parts, cleaning them. That's it. Oh and helping out in supply. BORING. Not what I wanted, I wanted to be on the front lines and get as close to the action as I could get.

I transferred to a different unit not even a month after training. I didn't get the chance to experience any of the NBC stuff. I was on a mission to see how close to death I could get.
This new unit was a field artillery unit reclassed to infantry (11b shoutout!) on the way to being deployed. I was super excited, nervous, and I didn't really know anything else. I was sucked in now. Screw computers, why play shooters when I can be in one right?

FF a couple months. We land in Arifjan. We are told that we will be pulling secfor - convoy escort, base security, and daily foot patrols.

I am going to stop here for now, this is a good stopping point, I have to get my stuff together and get to work, more to follow shortly

Welcome aboard the Wrong Planet, fellow-traveler QuadCoreDueller.

Good story so far, QuadCore. I can relate as far as high school goes. I could've been valedictorian if I had just turned in my friggin homework! lol. But I made it barely. Anyways, your parents sound a lot like mine; they raised me well despite all the problems they had to deal with due to my Aspergers. Of course, the fact that I have little social skills excaberates the general "teenage attitude problem" means that even the parental patience vat is leaking out pretty quick. Well, at least I only gotta hang with them for 4 more years at most, less than that if I can find a few roommates to hang with...

Thank you!

Picking up from my previous post.
This is where things are getting crazy, and only recently have I come to terms with all that follows (through life, counseling, and support from family).

So, we get orders that we are to be responsible for the safe keeping and well being of fellow soldiers while they sleep. I was issued a 249 w/ 2000 rounds to carry around with me. The first couple days were just to get used to the place, the politics of military life in a combat zone, what you do, what you don't. I became pretty good friends with most of my squad mates. The first year was pretty uneventful. Lots of security detail in downtown Kuwait City, nothing exciting.
THis is not what I imagined it to be. So, while my unit was demobilizing, I put in for a volunteer to stay behind and continue this fight.

They people who I hung out with, eventually made friends with, ate with, and pulled crap details with were going home. I had no problems making friends, granted I would only make 1 or 2, but they were close.

Those close friends stayed behind as well.

I lost both of them a couple months later, pretty tragically.

It wasn't what I wanted different, it wasn't who I wanted to bring back. I torment myself with what I could have done differently. If I was standing here, what would have happened? If I was a little late, what would have happened? If I would have given that kid some water, would I be dead instead of him?

Crazy stuff to go through when your only 18.

There was some crazy stupid stuff that happened. One of my buddies went section 8 (psycho) and let loose upon our own Entry Control Point with a 240b. Put about 40 rounds towards friendlies. His reason? He was bored, and wanted some action.

The only way I can look back on all of the time I was over there, is with fun. I was in a place where you could let loose, get some adrenaline going, get crazy, and not get in trouble.

I came home, and was home no longer than 2 months when I volunteered to go to New Orleans to help with the hurricanes. We arrived first at the superdome 2 days after the hit. If you were following what happened, then you should know about the superdome. Gangs raping tourists and killing them, stuffing their bodies inside vending machines. Stashing bodies in closets, in the roof.

We moved out of there in short order, and took over a hospital in one of the parishes. What I saw in the hospital haunts me today. Some ppl grabbed a guy off the streets, strung him up on surgical table, and decided to practice on the dude. They took his blood and made a bunch of witchcraft symbols and such on the walls. They hung his organs from various instruments from the ceiling.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

And I almost forgot, where we stayed in Kuwait City, during the first gulf war, the Iraqi troops who invaded took the officers and family of officers into our rooms and slaughtered them. When we moved in, we had to disinfect the rooms and clean up 12 year old blood stains.

For some reason, I was surrounded by death. But that is waht I wanted.

I came home, and for the first time, I wanted to get away, and relax from all that crap. I had met my beautiful gf on my R&R trip home. I wanted to start a life, and get a family going, and just be normal for the first time.

As luck would have it, I had the opportunity to be discharged. My 1st sgt took pity on me and my quickly de-escalating state of mental health, and I got out with a general discharge.

From that point on, I began on an even darker journey - the drug world. I never did meth, or heroine. All of the other mainstream drugs, I did try. At least 2 times. I would like to say I regret it, I would take it back if I could, I would make wiser choices, so on. But I don't. If I didn't experience everything I have I would not be the person I am today.

I went through a couple of miserable friend relationships/room mates. I was wild, and getting even wilder. I didn't dive right into the drug culture, I came in the right way, if there was a right way. Slow, methodical, in safe groups, and with research into what was before hand, and what could be expected from the beginning to the end.

I have not touched any of that stuff for a couple years now.

My wake up call is a story in it's own, but heres the cliff notes: go out, somebody slipped me some stuff, God was giving me dreams (and I don't believe in God, never have), and in one night, I got drugged, robbed, beaten, saw somebody get shot 4 times 5 feet away, saw demons, saw some really crazy stuff.

From that point, I was walking with God, and for the most part I still do today. I am just at wits end with Him though.

^Regarding that comment - I have always had voices in my head, and I have always felt I was different than others, that I thought differently, walk differently, everything. When I came to God, that was an explanation for the voices, it made sense.

Now though, I am trying to figure out exactly what voice is which. They are lower voices, and gut insinct voices, most incoherent, none telling me to do bad stuff. They just critique me, tell me what im doing wrong, how I can improve.

Are these voices really of God, or are these voices coming from myself, and my persona? Are these the ones that people are afraid of? I'm not afraid of them, they have done nothing but helped.

I can't tell others about them.

So, I believe that that is a great start to myself.

I am going to leave this post here, I have tons more to say, but I feel kinda rude taking up thread space in the welcome forum, I saw some offshoots and stories and such on the main forum page, I will most likely continue or restart there, or in my blog.

Let me leave it at this:
My life is messed up right now, financially I am a wreck, physically I am getting back on track, and I don't know what the **** is going on mentally. I really appreciate this forum as a means to vent in some cases, talk without fear of repercussion, and hope of life making a little more sense than it does now.
Thank you for reading, and if you want to know more or would like to talk more in depth, shoot me a pm or add me as a friend.

THANK YOU!
Trevor

To WrongPlanet!! !