Hello all,
I found this place a week ago and decided to register finally. I'm a 31 year old guy who lives in Seattle. I haven't been diagnosed formally and I didn't even know there was a test for Asperger's, but I'm pretty sure I have it, though not the more severe symptoms. My mom always told me she suspected that I was autistic, and this was before Asperger's was a widely known thing. I was a shy, quiet child who was very academically gifted. School was easy for me, but during recess, I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't like playing tag or foursquare or monkey bars or whatever the other kids were playing. Reading books was my favorite activity. As a result, I had few friends, and still do to this day.
I also had speech problems. When listening to myself on a tape recorder, I drone on in a monotone, and I'm really slow to express my thoughts. My mouth doesn't move fast enough to say what's on my brain. Often, I have to start a story over because I forget to tell the other person basic information establishing the scene. This was apparently so bad that I had to go to a speech therapist for a while.
I'm really bad at conversation. More than anything, I just marvel at how some people can just prattle on about nothing. And it's a vicious cycle, because if you make friends by talking to people, you can have fun adventures with them that provide topics for future conversation. My life is mostly, "Well, I saw this cool movie on Netflix the other night..."
However, everyone tells me that I write beautifully. My advisor in grad school (I failed out of a Ph.D. program) told me to become a writer, and by all means, initiate any contact with a future employer by writing, not verbally.
I've never really had a meltdown or had to stim, I don't think. And I understand and express emotions. I used to chalk up my whole "deal" as just being nerdy. But many of the experiences I've read on here, I totally see myself in them, and I've never heard anyone else express that particular experience or feeling.
06 Dec 2010, 10:33 pm
