Undiagnosed Anomaly (This is lengthy.)

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Hello all,

My moniker is OT. I am male and in my 20's.
I am a relatively happy (tepid or stoic, or bored, often amused, but never unhappy or sad) guy.
Normally I am partial to objectivity and being a quiet reader, but today I'm going to describe a bunch of experiences on the slim chance anyone here has had a similar experience to, well, anything. I neither want nor accept pity, or anything of the sort. I am looking for something of an objective deconstruction of similarities and differences, whatever they are. Note: I am aware this site is not for the purpose of being diagnosed, and, with that in mind, am still curious to know whether anyone has had similar experiences, diagnosis or not.


Recently, a Nurse I had been meeting with at the suggestion of my social case worker (formerly homeless) told me I am sane. Typing it out like that has me laughing, because I can see Heath Ledger saying "I'm not crazy." as the Joker, and it makes me wonder if that's what other people saw when I said the same thing, which is new because I didn't think about how other people think until recently. Still do not care, but now I am curious. Last year a boss at a job that does not suit me (construction) told me I am abnormal, his coworkers were adamant I'm insane -- specifically, he said "You know, you're not a normal kid by any standards."

Until that point I had suspected something to be wrong with the world, but could not describe it to the people around me. Objectively speaking, most of the people who've been around me for most of my life are... not intelligent. If I try [When I tried] to explain to them "the world" is a kind of vesica piscis of our separate worlds, like a communal reality, and it changes into an interesting, layered Reuleaux geometry with the addition of more lives present, altering worldlines, they have nothing to say. The smart, greyer ones try sometimes, but they flounder. A lot of the people who could be colourful go on Reddit (or a certain imageboard) instead, and they're the ones who are most similar to my [former] male guardian; the [former] female guardian was kind of a typical poor, single caucasian woman with health problems and an entry level job, two of them at one point.

Sometimes there would be a smarter person I could try talking to, bordering colourful more than the others, but they're often lazy or driven by money and validation-seeking displays of prestige (I interned as a chemical engineer at a major corporation when I was ~15-16 for a couple weeks and what I did in 90min was a chemical engineer's 45h work week; that and the attitudes of many of the people working at the same place surprised me so badly I quit... I thought people only got good degrees if they cared about what they were working toward, but they only cared about claiming on the internet or to other people that they have a certain car, or salary, or whatever; they didn't care about changing anything that bothered them, they were sated with what they could immediately obtain). Quite annoying was the feeling that 90% of the adults in the world were children, but I was aware I was a child and couldn't figure out why I would feel older than them; most of the adults in my life treated me like I was ret*d, or said as much, and it was annoying because I was aware they weren't on the same level somehow. Not going to bother going into detail on people my own age because I don't understand or comprehend why they do or say any of what they do. It was as if either the world wasn't a right fit or I wasn't, before and after the internship, but I couldn't figure out why exactly. I had a hunch that I was lagging behind somehow, but I wasn't sure if that was really it or if it was something else. I thought for the longest time that racism meant discriminating against people with black or white shadows... shouldn't have skipped paying attention to biology classes [race is a useless concept], but it required rote memorization and the teachers were boring [apathetic?].


Growing up, my guardians would often start fights with me because of something that did not matter, like not being able to sit still in school. Or I read too much; I didn't read enough, I studied too much, I didn't study enough, I was alone too much, I was outside too much, blah blah blah. I was in trouble just about every second they were awake, and definitely every time I went outside the house with them by the time we got back (I pointed that out one time and was scolded/grounded for mouthing off). I could never do anything right. Admittedly, it took me ~18min to figure out a can opener; not quite sure what that says about me, but it was not easy until I did it the second time (first was an accident and I didn't recognize that was how it worked). I couldn't speak until I was ~4, or ride a bike without training wheels until ~11, or tie my shoes until almost 13; physical activity was [is] annoying because I'm conscious of almost everything, from breathing to walking, so I have to think about anything I want to do.

Sometimes I get a kind of needles sensation, like a limb is asleep or going from cold to hot too fast, but different, and that's one of few exceptions to me being ~100% aware of my body's movements. That happened a lot at school when the lessons were boring, but sometimes it happened when I was doing something fun so I've never been able to pinpoint anything more definitive. The male guardian was highly... temperamental when I'd feel needles, which often made them much worse because he would try to force me to stop doing something to go do chores when I felt them or freak out until I got "kicked" from my body (I changed the way that was typed because it looked like "kicked out" as in kicked out of the house, but that happened often as well, so often I got used to sleeping in trees; I'm adding it here as a kind of aside).

He was a stereotypical "drunk father," as is portrayed on television and in movies, but he did not drink when he was violent or [and] emotional. Sometimes if I looked at him he would lash out or challenge me to a fight (if you've ever heard that edited Chatty Patty commercial with the swearing, it sounded a lot like that, and since I first heard the commercial I laugh every time; it's too absurd; and now any memory I have of him saying those things has the audio overwritten with that commercial, it's hilarious). I've never understood why someone so fond of saying "You think that makes you a man, huh?" is so prone to feeling manly only when he has emotional outbursts toward children and women (he threw a turkey [chicken?] at his wife when he wanted to go biking and her friends invited her to a dinner because they refused to leave me alone with their son until I was ~16). He was obsessed with respect and hated any questioning of the world or him (questioning anything, really; "It is what it is, and leave it at that." or "Why do you have to complicate every single thing in life?"), it was tantamount to calling the Westboro Baptist Church anti-Christian heathens in person, and if I ever cried he would immediately make certain he was the reason.

The female guardian was highly critical of everything I did while somehow maintaining a steady ignorance of anything that may have changed her opinion of me. She would watch talk shows like Oprah and Ellen and talk about how she wished I were a "good boy" or a "smart boy" like the kids on the shows while I was playing with Lego -- she did not notice I was building L-Glycine, or a scaled-model of the House of Commons, or replica castles (sometimes I would get attached to a certain movie, watch it ~40x in a week, and then I'd build stuff from the movie, but most of the time it was chemistry-related). She could not help past 3rd Grade mathematics, while her husband thought himself a genius and could not figure out 10th Grade sciences or [any] philosophy.

He often tried to quote pop-culture geniuses and their works (kind of similar to the people who try to attribute logical fallacies correctly all the time, but that's all they have for an argument instead of just debating what they think and learning from being wrong/mistaken; or when a person corrects your grammar but doesn't have a rebuttal for your argument, so you just walk away or leave the conversation), but he always made himself look like an idiot by wrongly attributing quotes or theories or subjects of study -- I think he mistook his smarts for intelligence; I find a lot of normal people do that. There was not a single week beyond the first month of adoption wherein we did not fight until after the male guardian divorced the female guardian (1 651 fights between 1995 and 2005, actually; most between '95-'98), and even after the divorce there were physical altercations between he and I until I gave up on him. It was always weird that he would say I was blaming everyone else and never looked at myself as the cause when I would take responsibility or accountability for almost all of the things that happened in the family, even if I wasn't there. Around three weeks before he told the family about him cheating/the divorce I had a precognitive dream (happens once every few weeks now, every single day for most of 6th Grade) of him telling the female guardian, their son, and me about him cheating/the divorce around our house's kitchen table, and I had suspected something weird was going on for a while in real life (he was drinking tomato juice and he hated it -- we had fights over the years because of me getting tomato juice instead of tomato sauce at the grocery store).

That moment in "Inception" when the dream-people stared at the girl changing the dream, it was very similar to that when he told us and I asked if I could continue playing Morrowind (favourite game); the female guardian and their son stopped crying and the three of them stared at me like I was Kanye interrupting Taylor Swift, or just outed myself as the Kennedy assassin, or I said Stephen Harper is amazing (they're really dumb with politics and can't think past preconceptions/prejudice; which is weird for a poor family since they were not racist, but selectively prejudiced against anyone doing better than them... well, he was, she is with someone rather affluent now, which is funny to me).


The rest of that family, except the female guardian's father, would tell me I am selfish. That I live in my own world (true sometimes, I do have a couple worlds I made but I never lived in them outside of my room) and am delusional. This was stuff they told me as a kid, before I was 8. My guardians spoke of my behaviour to others as if I started everything and became inconsolably emotional or violent over nothing. I would only fight back when I got "kicked," or when they screamed or I had an overflow, but when I explained it they said it was making excuses and I'd get punished or grounded for talking back/mouthing off. Most of that family considered me devil spawn (heard more than one person say it), and for the most part would not have much to do with me without having their guard up, evading questions, or acting like I hadn't said anything.

Since I couldn't talk to anyone intelligent, or at least smart, I shut up most of the time... which also got me into trouble because I "never spoke up." Sometimes I would just talk about the things I liked because they sounded interested when they asked, but I'd hear them after saying I never shut up, so I just talked to them less and less. I dislike comparing life to video games (tastes/feels like I have mud in my mouth when I do) but if anyone has played an rpg (Fallout 3, for example), when there was a "blow-up" or a fight, or "falling into" a pattern, being "kicked" was like going from 1st person to 3rd person in the game but with some weird fuzzy or close screen [lens?] effect. Explaining that one, or attempting to, got me grounded for a week for lying or making excuses.

Thanks to the female guardian's father and a brother of the male guardian, I found out alcohol does the kick thing (at first it was <1 shot[25mL]/day, last year it was ~1 pint[375mL]/day; I don't drink at all now). The important part of that is that when I'm "kicked" from 1st person (I always called it "overflow," because the first time I noticed it was when pepsi/fizzy pop "overflowed" out of my nose and choked me up) to 3rd person my body acts on its own. Sometimes I feel like I have control over it when I get kicked without alcohol, but it's really far away, or hard to control, like the air around it is too viscous; other times it just did what I would do... but better, or rather, smoother. With alcohol, I basically go to sleep while my body does whatever, and I can usually remember most of it later; I used that from just before I turned 8 until a few months ago. Sometimes when I was asleep I felt this kind of sonar-like ping, and I'd start reading from a pile of books, but once I found whatever it was I needed to find I went back to sleep. Can't remember what I was reading any of those times, but I know it was in a huge library I've never been to in person before, and it had really weird lights that didn't buzz (no electricity). That happened on occasion as well, knowing a place perfectly without ever seeing it in person before. I could see it in a dream, just normally sleeping at night, and then a year or two later I'd go to that place. The female guardian's father said I shouldn't tell other people stuff like that because it's "scary," but he said he has a similar thing so he always knows where he is even if he loses his gps, so I thought everyone had stuff like that, too.

I have nightmares usually once or twice a week, but I'm never in them. I am, but I'm another person in the nightmare; usually trying to stop my new body from being killed, but I almost never succeed because I can't use the body correctly. I've only seen one of the nightmares in the news (online, a guy posted a girl's location after other posts or something, but I was her in a nightmare in the area it happened). Most of the dreams in between precognitive and nightmare combine different video game elements into some absurd pseudo-universe, and sometimes [rare] I have a lucid dream like that. Almost never have sexual dreams (they happen infrequently, less than lucid dreams, but they're almost always the same day I go on a date or do something sexual, so thankfully that's simple). Never had dreams with alcohol, only woke up feeling completely refreshed the day after, no matter what happened the night before.

People liked it better when I was essentially a mindless animal [kicked with alcohol] compared to when I was awake and aware so I thought that meant it was better... or at least that my body was a functionally competent human by comparison. It would've been great as an experiment but I did it far too long and screwed up a lot of my life trying to make other people happy with me. They were never happy with me, now that I think back, only placated by fleeting joy at the prospect I would lead them to great riches or something [that was my attempt at sarcasm; ha ha]. There are no lingering side effects, and I'm lucky/happy for that, but I also don't go near alcohol (since I've started trying to get fit one small sip of wine had me dizzy and less than a mouthful of beer almost made me fall asleep, so the wine rack I have might be used over the next ~10-15 years, but I'll be staying away from beer and hard liquor).

As for testing: I was taken aside in 1st Grade to assess my mental state; they weren't certain whether I needed "special classes" or not. I did a few silly personality quizzes and three IQ tests. The personality quizzes just told them I can learn in any way, but I prefer concrete and practical examples (not that they ever heeded that). The first IQ test I failed horribly and got around 40, so they made me re-take it and I scored so high it wasn't on whatever rubric they were using, so they made me take a different one and I got ~80 or so. They left the room to talk so I can't hear what they're saying when I recall it, but I think that made them give up because I was sent back to class. Haven't done anything like that since, except silly colour/personality tests and one career assessment in 9th Grade (which told me I could be anything I wanted... not very helpful).


(That is preamble. I think. I am trying to keep it relevant, except this, but ~20 years of video in one a few words is not as easy as I imagined when I started this post.)


The female guardian's father died ~5 years ago of cancer. He was the only one who was aware of the difference between me and the rest of the family, besides a great uncle who died almost a decade before. The female guardian's father taught me simple things in a practical way, with concrete examples that made sense. Mostly how to survive on my own in the wild (helps when homeless, but I never expected hunting/fishing or cooking/baking to pay off as a survival thing). He was very patient with me, and if I would get too frustrated and try to give up he would pick up whatever I dropped and do it correctly, albeit slowly, or a different way. If I was learning something quickly he would pick up the pace and teach me more advanced things faster. He was strict with me but fair; instead of how my male guardian would tell me to throw a few hundred pieces of wood in the basement mid-winter in my boxers because I refused dinner and tried to go to bed, the female guardian's father would plastic-wrap it or tell me to eat it when I'm ready. I owed that man a lot.

He faked senility on his hospital bed before he died -- I didn't understand why he was doing that, but I listened when he told me not to tell anyone. I wanted to visit him a lot more, but his daughter/my female guardian thought I was getting weird and pestered me to keep busy with school so I didn't fail. I don't know how to feel regret, but if I could I think that would be the one time I should feel it. At his funeral I smiled. It didn't make sense to cry over something that was going to happen regardless of cancer -- I mean, yes, it was unfortunate that he was in pain and died early of cancer, but death is natural and inevitable. Could not comprehend why I was the only person out of a few thousand who came through to know that.

That set me further apart from the family (most of the town, and most people who were there from outside of town) than anything else: they thought that because I wasn't an emotional wreck I didn't care about him, and a lot of them called me ungrateful or a brat (or a psychopath, I was concerned about that on the same level as psychosis and schizophrenia). Until that point, I never really thought that people feel differently. I thought females tended to be more capable of showing emotion (actually, females often appeared to me the more logical sex, using emotions as a "release" similar to my overflow, among other things, like having their own language), and men were more "emotional" in an explosive or negative way for no reason.


Fast forward to recently: I let slip to the guardians I am looking to get a diagnosis and found out they're trying to have me diagnosed as psychotic, schizophrenic, or sociopathic to discredit anything I could say about the past (they're averse to autism, psychopathy, and a couple other things that they seem to think would reflect badly on them or give any credence to how I experience the world). They seem more terrified to have their name sullied than they do about people calling them out as bad parents, but that may just be me thinking that because I grew up with them acting horribly at home and horribly nice outside of the house because they cared more about what other people think than what actually happened. Normally I would consider the "they're trying to undermine my attempt at figuring out who/what I am" as paranoid thinking, but they have a "personal friend" who is also a therapist they've been trying to force me to meet with, even screaming and yelling over the phone when I refuse after they try to sneak it into the conversation; they'll say things like I'm not a machine, and they don't understand why I'm doing this, and why am I acting like this.

I think they deluded themselves over the years into thinking they've done no wrong and I had a perfect life. I brought up this time I was ambushed by 15 guys while on lunch break at the local YM-YWCA (shadow-lifeguard, swim instructor) and had black eyes/busted lips/bruises and nobody from the family remembers but the people I worked with remembered when I asked them; there are things like that which happened often when I was growing up, but the guardians don't remember much of anything unless it suits their argument. Maybe their memories work differently so they only remember things they don't like (no wonder they're always complaining about being unhappy if that's the case), but I can remember almost everything I've ever done, including the stupid things or times I made a daft mistake, so I don't understand why they can't remember/recall more. I don't expect them to be able to recall everything the way I can, but if they remembered/recalled anything more than what immediately suits them, it'd be swell.

The guardians have never supported me until I start to become successful on my own (I went from homeless to homeless with a job, to homeless with a job and attending school, to an apartment and a job and school on my own), and then they push back into my life like I pushed them out and claim credit over whatever I've done for myself (told a lot of the family and their friends they helped me with school and work when none of the family spoke to me for months). I am happy they pushed me into swimming, because I hated the water and was terrified of drowning, even though I had this swirly-water lava lamp with lights and coloured beads instead of the lava that I could watch for hours (had a lava lamp at one point too, red light because blue kept me awake all night and yellow-green made me gag). Since I started business school (before I got kicked out for being too tired/acting weird) some of the family had been more helpful, but since they're all in one small area I moved to a city to be further away from the ones I didn't like.

To prevent any chance of the results the guardians want, I took part in studies about psychosis and schizophrenia as part of the young male control groups -- if I had either, I couldn't be part of the control group and they had an obligation to tell me to get checked out. I had neither, but during neurological testing I found out I have synaesthesia and maybe tetrachromacy. The former explained immediately why I've always been able to see [perceive] colours differently, or hear lights and sometimes see sounds, or feel things I can taste or smell. Helped me figure out my dislike for fizzy pop/pepsi and why I can only drink rootbeer a certain way (straw+swish or the bubbles make me choke up like pepsi did). That also explained a bit of overflow to me, and the Nurse I've been meeting with called it... "overstimulation" I believe? I'd get woozy if I was stuck in a place with patterns all around me and I could get kicked by "falling in," but that was rare. I think I might have "female" eyes because I agree with females on many colours, as opposed to tetrachromacy, but I'm also not a scientist or good with people or biology (compared to the guy who told me about it being all three) so that's a moot point.


After I told the Nurse about a lot of this stuff, he asked if I had heard of Asperger's and told me a little about it, and to check it out -- I thought he said assburgers; not the first time I've had to ask someone to clarify. I immediately recalled a lot of people calling me an aspis... and realized that maybe they hadn't meant a venomous snake. Doi. -_-
I meant to look into it immediately, but I got kind of focused on learning to setup ArchLinux to see if I could build a phone OS (not a good idea when I'd never fiddled with Linux/Unix before). I started the account a week or so ago, but did the same thing again. That aspie-aspis kind of misconstruction is frequent. The boss who told me to get checked out told me to "pound sand" one day and I told him "Okay." and took the compactor to the trench to "pound sand." No wonder he left early that day [now that I know it means "f*** off"]. That sort of thing has caused me trouble my whole life, once I started to review memories I figured out a lot of those family fights were caused by similar misunderstandings and impatience -- if people give me the chance to explain, they usually comprehend what happened, but I get anxious when they freak out and won't let me explain, or go on tirades.

I also get anxious [I think it's anxiety; I know I'm not nervous, but I have no other words to explain the feeling except the following] in crowds, a really unsettling feeling, not quite leaden stomach or empty stomach/hungry but close, and it's occasionally accompanied by a light, almost feathery dizziness and a weird TV static channel (salt and pepper wars, lol) when I hear din (can't stand din, that weird mesh of voices in large groups, ugh). I don't get headaches and I don't get sick often. Kind of weird, about being sick, I would only ever get the 'flu or strep throat during years the guardians remembered to get me to the doctor's or a clinic for shots. The years I had those massive combo-shots with half a dozen or a dozen different things put me in a near-crippling state of strep throat or the 'flu (they thought it was mono three of the four times, but the medicine didn't work and it went away 2-3 weeks later). Haven't broken a bone or sprained anything, either, but I didn't do much of the stupid things a lot of people in the same generation have done (cannot bring myself to call it "my generation" because if it was mine there would not be 99% of the problems there are with the silly bunch, or so I would like to believe... I'm not convinced).

I tried to explain only little bits of this stuff to others, to see if they could get any of it, but most just call me crazy and assume I'm hallucinating or paranoid, and they can never understand or comprehend it's not thought-based. For example, zero is a white X. If I think about 0 as x or green it's just wrong and a white X comes up, like it's correcting me. I tried making 9 yellow and square instead of a medium red circle, but then 9 and 6 (a yellow Star of David) came up. The male guardian is one of those people who thinks mental disorders are people acting to get sympathy/special treatment or faking it because they want government money, and that everyone is the exact same, although he sometimes spouts idiocy like psychiatrists just want to drug everyone so they and their "Big Pharma" co-conspirators can make an extra dollar. I personally have never seen nor heard of a grant for people with synaesthesia (not looking because I don't care anyway), but money isn't something I'm concerned about (unlike him, whose life is a lot of "wah, I'm not rich without effort, my life would be better winning the lottery").

I'm not saying psychiatrists and Big Pharma are not capable of skewing things so they can make more money, but I think of everything as options instead of set facts, so even if someone had valid proof and literally piles of physical evidence from all throughout the history of Big Pharma/psychiatry, I'd give them at most 98% probability of being correct (this bugged teachers, math a lot of the time, because they would all try to teach me that things were only allowed to be done one way and I'd find 2-3 or more different ways to do the same thing... physics professors were much the same, "You're only allowed to think in this little tiny space because someone else said it works. I don't know how it does work, don't ask me to explain, but it's established that it works so that's that." so I stayed far away from physics after the first couple classes I checked out in person; online isn't as bad).

The flatmates I was living with until September, guys who were very fond of weird/harder drugs, gave me insight into how people think differently, but they were prone to getting angry if I didn't defer to whatever knowledge they picked off of Reddit, which was unfortunate (a lot of young caucasian males are like that... makes me wonder if that's a "thing" like how a lot of young caucasian females on Tumblr rant about "Patriarchy" being the greatest current problem of humanity). Those guys were not at all up for thinking more than the math teachers, or English teachers, or physics professors, although they tried to make it seem like they were unrecognized geniuses by putting people down all the time. Example: someone thinks animals have intelligence, they say no, if anyone argued past their "no" the person up for an open debate is ridiculed and they act like they were amazing without providing anything to the argument.

It was fun messing with them, but I hardly had to do anything sometimes, because I'm used to considering a lot of options as maybe correct and they were used to everyone deferring to their "wisdom" because nobody knew better or considered other options. We were going to play a game like D&D once and one of them wanted to be GM (he had just about every book on the specific game) so he considered himself a solid source of information. I read the rules on my own, which made him annoyed but he didn't say much beyond maybe I shouldn't ruin the game for myself, so I made a character a bunch of different ways and asked him what he thought about them. He didn't like it, but this time I didn't know, so he made something up combining that game and D&D's rules -- I didn't expect anything to come of the interaction, I thought that as GM and having so many books he would've read them all and known what I should do (why else have that many books if you're not going to read them?).

I checked out a different class and made a character with the new one, but kept the old one to play with since he already okay'ed it. When I showed/explained the new one to him and the nerfs [disabilities; constraints] I added to it (basically stopped me from god-moding later in the game) he freaked out and got close to yelling about how I kept trying to undermine him as a GM and how he's the god of the game and that I'm not allowed to make anything besides what he tells me, so I told him he wasn't the GM for that character (seriously, I was going to play the character he okay'ed with him as GM, and use that experience to play online with the other character) and he freaked out even more, like I questioned a serious claim of godhood.

He made me think of the male guardian's responses, how arrogant the latter was without any reason, and it made me laugh a lot after that (someone who has studied and practiced something, or collected something, or developed a skill to an amazing degree I can handle being arrogant because I can admit they're objectively better than most others; they should be happy/proud so long as they're not annoying and only ever gloat about that one achievement, but I am no fan of people who are arrogant and have no reason for it; at the risk of emulating the cranky male guardian, I believe respect is earned, but arrogance is as well. I am merely open to treating someone as an equal whether they've earned my respect or not; this is, as far as I can tell, one of the reasons I was good with kids when I did the shadow lifeguard/swim instructor jobs, because I would have fun and play around but also treat them like they're competent and equal individuals when we had to do something for a badge or a report card, instead of treating them like nuisances).


Prior to meeting those flatmates, the way other people thought was a back-of-my-mind concept, like I knew people think differently, but I was not aware of it. One guy thought in words and the other thought in music and sounds or something like that (not very honest people, so I tended to stop listening when they stopped being honest, although they often got angry when I asked about anything that wasn't shallow or might make them appear not the way they wanted to appear... not good at describing it, but it's like they wanted to appear amazing, but were trying to force it and it just didn't work, so anything that wasn't "on the surface" was usually a no-no or they got angry).

I think in videos with words and sound and colours, almost the exact thing I experience. I can replay or reverse it (reverse is kind of fuzzy), almost every day back to ~2 years old. Before they made me aware other people think differently, I thought we all had the same thinking mechanism (the way they talk about it in school) but that I was just not as good as other people at using it (I thought it was the same with other people having to think/focus/consciously control what their body does and theirs were more "in-tune" or synchronized than mine). It felt like I was always behind and could never catch up to other people; it's weird typing this out as well, but that is how it has felt.

Do any of you get that feeling when you meet or see someone else, that they might be interesting? One where you can pick a person out of a crowd, like, "No... no... no... no, you're normal... you're normal... normal... normal... ah, woah, you're different/you're not a normal/who or what are you?" I tried explaining that to "normal" people, but they get confused and think I mean that I think the person is different, but it's this nagging feeling like the person in question and I may be more similar than the normal people around us. It's not extremely rare, but it's not at all frequent. I've had a few people ask if I thought I was smart but I didn't know how to take their question (was it supposed to be an invitation to a discussion, was I supposed to prove I was at the level they perceived, was it their way of asking the same thing I was "detecting" in others, was it supposed to be a challenge?).

I replied to one girl that I know I'm not remotely smart but I have some intelligence, though she would only say that she thought I was different than other people and wouldn't elaborate, so it wasn't very useful as an exchange. I think it may be the synaesthesia, but normal people have bland shadows, like black or white, and sometimes smarter normal people have grey shadows, but the people with that "maybe you're like me" feeling have colourful spots in comparison. Oh, and those colourful people don't cost me energy when I'm around them, or at least, not as noticeably as colourless people; normal/colourless people often take ~40 kcal [cal?] to deal with (I know the approximate value because 10g of sugars replenishes me after one "small talk" interaction of ~2-10 minutes, even though I'm not talking as much as they are. It's that I have to try to control my body while trying to figure out what they mean and how to respond that takes so much energy -- before my current job I would have to sleep after interacting with ~26 people [100{*.7 or -30% energy/ person], sometimes sleeping up to 38h after dealing with a lot of people. The current job requires longer days in public, so I take bags of candies and things with me, and I measured it out one day to see what works and what doesn't until I hit 10g sugars).


I am currently waiting on the social case worker to find an available psychiatrist (I believe that's what I need for a diagnosis in Canada). I tried on my own last year but I can't get a private one, or at least, in my province there's no such thing as a private practice psychiatrist, only psychologists, so I didn't get to meet anyone useful. The only way I can meet someone useful before ~7-18 months is to say I want to commit suicide, but I just can't bring myself to lie about something like that. I thought about it once, for maybe 9s, but it was a curiosity thing, more like "I wonder what kind of impact my death could have on the world?" than a "Woe is me, perhaps I should off myself."

People have asked me before if I thought about suicide, but I'd always wondered whether they meant they were thinking about it and wanted to know what I thought of it as a concept or that they were thinking of committing suicide. I didn't know that they thought I would do it until someone recently said that's probably what they meant; then again, apparently people in high school thought I was going to be a school shooter. I laughed when a person from my graduating class told me that. I thought with all the people trying to fight me all the time I would be the first one gone if something like that ever happened (I wasn't the kind of guy looking for fights, I looked identical to this guy in the same area who happened to be the toughest kid in school and between that and my choice responses to strangers asking stupid questions, I ended up in a lot of fights). On my last day of high school someone made a bomb threat and most of the people there thought it was me. I got into trouble for telling the Police Chief I wouldn't tell them if I was going to bomb something, because that doesn't make any sense. Why would you plan out something illegal, dangerous, and possibly violent, then tell people? That's just dumb as hell (not that doing it, or playing with volatile chemicals isn't...).

As for the rest of education, I passed literacy tests easily but always had problems with English teachers saying they want to know what I think but failing me for giving them what they ask for (and I don't know how/why the schoolboards let so many illiterate people be English teachers, I had to correct them almost every year from Primary onward). Math is undecided; I don't know that I like it, but I'm not bad at it because I only failed it until I had a teacher who was strict but fair (5th Grade: he was what I think of when I hear "old codger" because he was an older man who was always angry and hated failure, but he was strangely fair about the anger/outbursts, and when someone succeeded, even if they failed 15min prior, he would still reward the success). Sometimes it takes a long time for me to get something because I'm over-anazlyzing it, as in math. Physics is sometimes confusing [over-analysis], Biology is annoying because it requires rote memorization (was never good at that), and most social studies are interesting but I'm not good at them (especially Geography and History... argh).

I'm not bad at languages, but I can't do accents so my speech sounds horribly stunted in anything other than relatively formal English. My voice is monotonous, according to a lot of feedback from school, and it's softer than some girls's voices so presentations had my voice all over the place. I got singing lessons just after I stopped being homeless, because I heard that helps, it did a little, but my voice still whomps. I'm getting better at memorizing things since I started trying to get as far as I can with pi two weeks ago; I can do strings of ~20-50 up to ~250 total, but I have to look at them for ~15-30min and place the coloured numbers/symbols in a video, then look at pi again a couple times in the days after. I can memorize around 50 at a time, but I can only write around 20 per line [paper] in symbols. Can't say it aloud in numbers very fast, and if I do it's choppy and my voice cracks.

The video is currently Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes; I've found that replacing the geometric shapes in the background helps to remember the symbols when I play the music video in my mind. I did consider the Hard 'n' Phirm song, but it doesn't go very far into pi and I can't seem to remember/recall lyrics. I thought I might be tone deaf, but I can pick out songs that will be hits a few months ahead of time, so I don't know if I am really tone deaf or just used to noticing what normal people react to. I am aware that not everything I like is amazing, but some of the choices of things normal people idolize are... curious. I have tried not to have a "me v. them" thought pattern with normal people, when it comes to discerning anything in my life, but it's like there's a chasm between me and them. I get along well enough, but it is annoying that I always feel like there's something I'm missing when I talk with a group of normal people.

The worst of it is trying to explain anything, because a lot of normal folk take it to mean I'm losing my ability to distinguish reality from dreams (hyper-realistic, especially lucid dreams, they're like those really weird HDTV's with HD channels... uncanny, or eerie, but not difficult to tell there's a difference; even precognitive dreams have an odd feel to them, almost like a whited-out, TV show kind of fuzzy memory) or some make-believe world (this one is easy, I have to meditate [stop everything I can move except for breathing] to get there so I can't hallucinate between reality and these worlds). Before I did the neurological testing and found out I have mild (medium? I can never figure out which ones are referred to like salsa) synaesthesia, I considered that one of few things normal people may be correct about me losing my mind. That was one of the reasons I was... not afraid of (haven't figured out how to feel fear, same with most normal people emotions), but concerned about schizophrenia (in part because I'd heard a person with schizophrenia can have delusions or hallucinations and in part because I know how closed-minded normal people are about anything that challenged pop-culture knowledge and a lot of normal people seem to think schizophrenia = multiple personalities; I don't get that reference, but as far as I know from talking to people with it, that's not anything like it). I was in classes with people with psychosis and I was not like them, so I was not as worried, but it was still a concern until post-study.

As for clarification regarding the emotions, I do feel some, albeit not many and often not strongly. As a kid they were all over the place and I could never seem to get ahold of one before another would overflow, but now everything just wobbles like jello and settles on its own (maturity, I hope). Mostly I'm amused, which is in between joy and happiness I think, or I'm bored, which is stoic or tepid but normal people called me bored so much I call it bored instead of neutral now. The last one is frustration, but that's not often anymore. They're like... thermometers? Mercury ones, with different colours, and the higher they rise the closer they get to happiness or anger (bored/stoic/tepid doesn't really change), and the more often I feel needles; once the coloured mercury reaches the top I usually try to change what I'm doing or go for a run or try to do something physical because I know I have too much energy. Worst case, overflow, and I get kicked. I haven't been close to being kicked or an overflow recently, even dealing with more people at the current job, so I'm not worried. I do take small precautions with me, just in case, like extra sugars/chocolates, or water, or music, or a book -- not that hard to calm myself down since there are so many things that can keep me busy. I guess an important one is love, but I just don't feel attached to people. I'll like or dislike people on an individual basis, and I'm okay with kids and animals, but that's different (like I want to make sure their lives are okay/fun, or I feel like I should try to make them happy if I can -- if I see an animal out in the winter when it's freezing I've knocked on a person's door to get them to let the cat/dog inside but I'd never do that for myself, or I'd put an old blanket on them, or given the animals or kids water if it's hot and summer time).

There are people I don't want to die because I like them, and I have dated and had not bad results, but I don't find it useful -- I could get as much done in one month without a relationship as I can through a year in a relationship. I don't have the money to care for other people's whims so I wouldn't be able to make someone happy financially, or emotionally because I don't know how to feel the same love they do or they expect in return for theirs; I don't want to make them feel like they're a bother, or waste our time, but that's what it usually is because I'm honest and direct and not many of the people I've met are both as well. And I really can't stand cheating... don't know if that is a "thing" because the male guardian ruined an already ruined family with it, or if it's just the concept, or the principle, but at the same time, I can understand the point of casual sex, so I'm open-minded but also closed-minded. I just don't bother with it very often.


Besides the Nurse (I believe he's working as a social worker/counselor for mental health with a Nursing degree; he has interesting ideas sometimes, though I've found him to be more focused on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy than considering what I feel isn't due to what I think), I haven't spoken a word of most of that to anyone. May not have told him that much. I don't really talk to people. It's not that I don't like people (an investigator guy told me I seem like I dislike people not long ago, and he said we all end up at jobs that suit our personality, but that means I should just read for the rest of my life, to me), or think I'm better (lol, I always thought I was incompetent or just not good enough; or born at the wrong time), I just don't know how to deal with people and the energy I have to put into "being acceptable" around them by knowing what to say and when and how, and all of their references to pop culture things I don't care about, or who got how many shares on whatever social media, or trying to move myself from an energy level of 0-1/10 --> 6/10 so I don't have to listen to "What's wrong, you seem down?" hijack every conversation, it just takes up so much conscious effort and time I'm going to give myself diabetes. I can't say I don't ever talk to other people, but if I'm not working I'm reading or studying/taking courses online. I just don't care about that aspect of life (perhaps moreso because I'm not good at it, but I'm used to being alone and like books/studying much more than trying to figure people out). My face doesn't help much if I find someone useful or interesting because that's the one thing I don't know how to change. Thankfully most people think my grimace is a gigantic grin, so people think I smile a lot, but otherwise my face stays in this neutral position and people ask what's wrong or why I'm angry when I'm... bored? Stoic? That gets annoying.

Then again, I can't blame them for not knowing how I feel based on my face because I'm not at all good with other people's faces. Same with voices... and sarcasm, I really don't like sarcasm -- a person who may otherwise be interesting or useful to talk with tends to turn into a jerk the second they figure out I'm not good with sarcasm. I don't care that they use that as a reason to be arrogant, well, that's annoying, but I can handle it. I care that they call me Sheldon when it's not my name and I've already told them my name. If it was one or two people I see frequently I would tolerate it (I'd assume it was some sort of joke I'm just not getting, which happens), but people I don't know and have never seen before call me that name after I've told them my name. Makes me wonder sometimes if I someone uploaded one of those vine things of me onto youtube and called it Sheldon, but I checked once and there was nothing unusual (mostly famous people of Jewish descent named Sheldon, or their businesses, and I'm not Jewish as far as I know... although one of the flatmates fond of drugs called me a Jew because I'm good at living with almost no money, but that's a combination of self-discipline, accountability, and not having a lot of money to waste on frivolous expenses).

I want to say the reason this is lengthy was to simultaneously find out what people with real diagnoses think and to give those of you who read this an idea of who/how I am, but I think this is the first time I've ever asked anyone else their opinion so it's weird. And I may have rambled... I don't know, what I typed until now seems like a relevant recap of 20-ish years, but I'm biased more toward wanting to know and making certain there isn't anything I missed that could be useful on this forum than toward pure objectivity. Probably should have looked at a bunch of other threads before posting but this isn't certain other sites where that can be detrimental. At least, based on what a female Nurse said, it's not a bad place. I only read the rules and started a post so far (she suggested this site when she heard me trying to describe to the case worker that I feel out of place, she asked if I felt like I was on the wrong planet and although I'd never thought that exactly it was weird that she was a normal person but knew the words for how I felt; that was a first, so here I am).
Again, I do realize and accept that if someone with a diagnosis says things are similar, even if only in one or two ways, it is opinion and not diagnosis. And again, I do welcome opinions from more than only people with diagnoses; I am at a point where I can't rule much out before I finally get to meet a professional (probably not until next year, anyway; at least I'll have a chance to be more than barely competent at math by then, yay).

(I almost didn't post this; kind of surprising that I can feel anxious "behind a screen.")

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think, please,
OT

(Something less serious: I found painting is the most calming thing I've ever done, besides attempts to get in shape, thanks to an odd old fisherman my landlord contracted to paint my apartment building this past week. I started doodling just after I left the construction job last year, but I could only come up with weird stuff or stick men until I really got into drawing this February. Still not good, but marginally better now. Can't wait to see if I can paint better than I can draw, or if it will be like a bike without training wheels, lol.)

I did not read all this. You say "sorry this is long", but if you take a look around at other posts here, you will see you have no idea what "long" means. You wrote a book.

If you want input, you will need to rewrite this, or just read what people post here and see if you can find some thing that relates to yourself. In time, you will be able to ask more precise questions.

It seems like you might have Aspergian traits.

In order to really KNOW, you should, if possible, obtain a professional assessment/diagnosis.

Either way....autistic or not...Welcome to the Forum

PS: People might not be as stupid as you think they are

Thank you for reading any.

I don't recall saying "Sorry this is long" and I would tell you that if you read the bottom, it states I didn't read anything except the rules prior to posting, but you just said "I did not read all this." so that's a waste on both points. I do indeed have an accurate idea of what "long" is for text, and that is only lengthy; although certainly not with respect to this specific forum, which again is a wasted point. Would you believe I started out with "Hello"?

It is worth more to have any feedback than none at all. Thus far I have received none from professionals, excluding being told I shall "likely be eligible for an assessment in ~7-18 months."
It is less that I think people are stupid and more that I am aware I am stupid and they are dumb -- that is, I cannot figure out their "common sense" and "they" [we are referring to normal people?] cannot figure out much beyond the limits they set for themselves.

Life is all about making sense out of this "common sense."

Hey OT welcome.

Welcome!

From what I read which wasn't a lot, you do appear to have ASD and are most probably a Savant. You say you are stupid and other people are dumb but it sounds like you grossly underestimate what a brilliant brain you truly have. Other people will struggle to recognize that and understand you because they will probably have no clue what it is to be that intelligent. I certainly don't and I consider myself above average in intelligence. I think you are different because you are highly logical and not as emotional as others (or those emotions you have don't seem to be attached to anything and just happen). This will probably make it difficult for others to understand you too because most people are highly emotional and not as logical (they can't help it).

I do get that feeling with people about whether they'd be interesting or not to talk to. I like discussing things very deeply and I can tell when someone else is like that. I'm really good at knowing whether people will be good or bad to me too but don't know how I know.

I hope you find your answers soon. It sounds like you have a lot of learning to do about how others see the world and experience it because you are truly quite unique.