Hi, this is my first post. So sorry it's so long, I just needed to thought dump >_<
Well, I don't know if I have Asperger's one way or another (even typing that it is a possibility is weirding me out) but I wanted to make an account here anyway because I don't know anyone I can talk to who might relate to some of my social problems.
I don't want to make any self-diagnosis but here are some of the things which make me suspicious (by the way, I am 23):
- When I get into something (typically some kind of story), a get into it "110%" as my mother has always said, and I have a hard time thinking/don't want to think about anything else (I'll usually bounce from obsessions rapidly due to running out of aspects of it to talk about that I haven't already gone over ad nauseum). I don't remember having obsessions as a small child until 3rd and 4th grade when I was obsessed with lizards/amphibians/insects/spiders and made my mom order every book out of the scholastic book orders related to the subject every time it came around. I even had some awesome pet leafy bugs and a toad. I'm a girl, so this didn't make me very popular, haha... but this never seemed to bother me very bad during those grades. I had one good friend at the time who looking back probably wasn't interested at all but I might have been kind of blind to that... When I get into obsessing mode, I do seem to become inconsiderate of whether my friends at the time care about it, and most of them, even if they liked the thing at first, seem to get sick of talking about it much faster than I do...
- I usually never have more than one good friend (peer) at a time (two if I'm lucky, but never three). Most of the friendships have ended abruptly, leaving me confused and disoriented. I tend to think it's my fault, in that I was either too boring (straight-laced), too obsessed with x thing they had moved beyond, or grossly offended them without realizing it.
- I didn't really have a good friend for 5th and 6th grade, and spent most of the recesses in 5th grade talking to the playground monitors (grown women) instead of playing.
- Played volleyball in 7th and 8th grade because my parents wanted me to, but never felt like I belonged on the team, because I couldn't identify with the team spirit feeling very well (and had a hard time identifying with peers).
- I tend to offend people without understanding why, and have "tone of voice" issues (which I inherited from my father). Even now that I've tried so hard to be careful of things I post even as facebook statuses, people still find things to get annoyed about. Nowadays I barely post on facebook. Face to face, I feel like its inevitable that I'll end up offending people if I act natural, so I've started trying to be more meek (I normally have a bold, strong personality).
- I have ever since I was a child identified as being asexual, and I've always had a hard time understanding how sexual people experience the world. When it comes to feeling others' (animals and people's) pain/suffering/misery, I'm extremely empathic (which is exhausting) and am easily led to tears over such stories and movies. But when it comes to trying to understand what it is like to have a sex drive, I can't imagine it, and am very grossed out by the idea. I also don't feel much of a need for any kind of physical closeness or touch except for the occasional wanting of a hug from my mom, dad, brother, or grandma. Hugs from older people (parents age or older), I don't mind if they are brief, but I don't like hugs or touching from peers.
- According to my current queerplatonic partner (of 9 years), I have an inability to express love, and as we were having this conversation where she was lamenting this (and feeling like she was the wrong/weird one for desiring verbal and physical affirmations), I was feeling really uncomfortable because I'm realizing just how uncomfortable I really am with the thought of expressing love in typical ways. For me, someone spending time with me is enough to tell me that they like me, and I don't require (nor really want) them to tell it to me in words. My emotional needs are filled by us laughing together/enjoying together some tv show. What I want out of a life partner is someone who will literally be just like my group partner on the project called life.. I don't want to have all this emotional baggage between us most other people seem to desire. Friend described me multiple times tonight as being "cold" and lacking warmth. But I was having a really difficult time empathizing with her tonight on feeling a need for emotional closeness. I feel awkward when people tell me they love me.
- I have a hard time making friends. Not only cause of the easily-offending-people thing, but I am a pretty intolerant person in general. I hardly have any patience when someone is being illogical or carried away by feelings, and I have a hard time relating to people who don't think about the deeper questions of life, morality, etc, as I seem to spend so much of my time thinking about these things.
- I also seem to be more intolerant than other people when my senses are offended (my dad is also like this ._.). Thing tastes bad? Can't choke it down (there are a lot of herbs and spices I don't like). Bad smell? I feel like barfing. Can't sleep with lights on (bad for long flights), can't sleep with any kind of noise that isn't white noise (although I can fall asleep to talking, I can't stay asleep), can't stand a laptop screen that's too bright (everyone always complains when they look at my pc that the screen is too dim). I'm easily mentally affected by bad feng shui or depressing decorating. I have a hard time "just dealing with" things. My self seems repulsed by the idea of dealing with something it decided it doesn't want to. Can't stand the idea of working 40 hours a week in a job I don't totally love (have a hard enough time working 20). I know its not pleasant to anyone, but I think I would be an emotional wreck.
- have had bad bouts of anxiety where I was afraid to leave the house cause I was convinced I was going to throw up. Have this irrational fear of throwing up (I barely ever throw up). Partly because of how unpleasant it feels (it traumatized me as a child), and partly because I would feel humiliated throwing up in public (its never happened, though I did throw up in my grandma's car once.. but I had the stomach flu). I think I've mostly worked past this anxiety, but I was going to a psychiatrist for it for a while...
- I don't think I have much touch-sensory aversion.. when I was a kid especially, my mom was very exasperated because my socks had to be on exactly right so I didn't step on the toe seam at all or I would freak out (I remember this). She always talks about what a pain it was when we were trying to run out of the door. Besides that, she had to cut out of the tags of most of my shirts... but I don't think there was much else in this section.
- Mom calls me a robot. I happen to love robots, probably because I can identify with robot characters better than human characters (Asimov is my favorite author).
- I am very militant when I've decided something.
- I don't have a daily routine really, and I get bored easily.. but I hate it when people want me to hop in the car and go somewhere without warning me ahead of time. At least an hour if its to the grocery store, and at least two days if its to the city. This, along with the anxiety, got me labelled as a homebody. Which I am. There aren't many things I'd rather do in the evening than stay home and watch some good tv show on netflix with aforementioned friend.
uh.. I think this is way too long already so I'll cut it here..
I don't know any Aspies (as far as I know) irl (although my brother has a lot of these traits as well..) so I have no idea whether I'm just over thinking things... would it be worth it to talk to a professional? I feel NT but I don't know if I've just blinded myself to all the ways I have an extremely difficult time relating with people and having a normal social life...
Other than all this, I'm also vegan, and a grad student in computational linguistics (its the robot/AI obsession). Friend and I are also writing stories in a universe where a third gender exists and has aspie-ish tendencies, so I'm here to learn.
So uh. Hi. ._.
18 Sep 2012, 3:02 am
