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I am hard on myself because I refuse to accept a victim mentallity. For better or worse, my whole life I have held myself to an impossibly high standard of behavior, fitness, and education that I will never be able to satisfy and thus I spend all my time persuing an impossibe ideal. I never do things beacuse they are fun. I do things only because I have to regulate my homeostasis and maintain my equilibrium and balance. For example, I feel that every time a part of my body makes hard physical contact with another object the muscle there is damaged and becomes smaller, thus, I have to exercise vigorously to "restore" myself. I know that it is a ridiculous idea but the paranoid thought got into my head when I was 15 and I just can't shake it.

Like I have said, I don't understand the concept of fun. I am not depressed. I am just determined to be better than everyone else in my chosen areas and I will drive forwards relentlessly until I satisfy that and become the paragon that I have envisioned. Deep down, I know that even if I get to the level of aptitude in bodybuilding and music that I want, I will still not be content and I will continue to push myself to the breaking point.

I went to Basic Training at Ft. Jackson, SC, in 2005. At that time I was 19 and completely mentally and socially unprepared for the trauma of basic training. The only thing I had going for me was outstanding physical fitness. I didn't know that I had Aspergers at the time so when I went to basic training I was making social errors left and right and making enemies of everyone. I was far too uncoordinated to do group PT or Drill.

When you get up in the squad bay you are thrown in with 40 other guys and it becomes quickly an intense social game. You have to know the right things to say to the Drill Sergeants so they leave you alone. You have to have all of the "life skills", everything from knowing to chew with your mouth closed to making a bed to being able to sweep a floor. When I was 19, I couldn't properly shave, wash myself, make a bed, tie my boots, or speak more than one coherent sentence to anyone. Consequently, I drew the wrath of the Drill Sergeants who were pissed off at me because I could not do something even after being told 50 times. The thing was though, they knew that I was intelligent in some areas because I had displayed some knowledge of army history in one of their classes; so they were perplexed that a guy with some intelligence could be so inept. They assumed I wasn't trying and were determined to "Motivate me." Even the captain of the unit knew my name(never a good thing), and he personally made me IT(individual PT training) to "motivate me.

I would up somehow getting through Basic training and AIT even though I hadn't actually learned any army skills because my brain could not adsorb them. I just barely passed my shooting qualification and All of the advanced drills and field skills were way over my head. By the end I realized that I just had to put my head down and say as little as possible and just try to endure through this in any way I could. I have no ability whatsoever with either gross or fine motor skills, and that showed because I went to my reserve unit unable to take apart my rifle, drive a HMMWV, put together my body armor, or do 100 other things soldiers need to do. On top of that, I was absolutely petrified at the thought of having to be around 100 strange guys all the time at a new unit.

My unit left for Iraq later that year in 2005 and that actually went OK. I was given a job in the TOC(unit headquarters) doing nothing but taking boxes of paper to copying machines for almost a year. That was fine by me as I never left the FOB(forward operating base) once to go on a mission and I did exactly the same thing every day for a year and I had plenty of time every night to do whatever. I only saw like 3 people every day and I had the same chow hall or Taco Bell to get meals from. It was very nice and routine.

At the end of 2006 I had been back home for a few months when I was informed by mail that I was going back to Iraq and I was going back with a different unit, a unit that I was unfamiliar with. I was apprehensive but I had no choice. I had been selected from a pool of availible bodies as a "fill-in". When I reported to this unit for the Train-up at Ft. Leonard Wood, I found to my horror and dismay that they were all a bunch of wanna-be special forces guys and I did not fit in at all. The Major of the unit spotted right away what a truly incompetent soldier I was. We spent all day going to the range or driving HMMWVs, and I was totally miserable. I was completely befuddled by the night-vision goggles, and I couldn't master any of the competencies they expected me to acheive.

So I was miserable, but as we went to Ft. Bragg to train further before deploying, that Major decided he was going to take me under his wing and be my "mentor". The problem with that was that I didn't want to be mentored. He wanted to try and change me into one of those HOOAH motivated guys and I, as a natural course, did not want to change and fought it in every way. So I began to passively resist his efforts to influence me, and he became very upset when I gave him the cold shoulder. Then, he started making me work 16 hours a day doing things like cleaning port-a-johns and moving piles of wood. Because I really didn't want anything to do with any of those guys, they hated me, and quite frankly, I hated them back.

Let me go back to when I first got to that unit. The smaller platoon I was with at first tried to integrate me into their group activities but I just hated doing things with them because I hated them as people. We just had nothing in common and I would have rather poked my eyeballs out that spend one minute with those men. Once they saw what I was really like, they started treating me like a child. They began to hate me when I told them that I didn't really want to go on missions or kill Iraqis like they wanted to do. All they ever talked about was what hot s**t they were and I wanted nothing to do with them.

By the time we flew to Kuwait and then Iraq, that unit was seeking creative ways to motivate me. Day after day I resisted their efforts, and I progressively became more motivated not to let them win. I took a hugely perverse pleasure in frustrating all of their efforts to include me in anything or try and upset me by bullying me or humiliating me. Once we finally got to Camp Taji, the 16 hour days continued and I was starting to mentally break down. They tried to take me out on missions but I was too much of a mental wreck to function.

When that Major was trying to motivate me, he was trying to do things to me to make me more aggressive. Truth be told, I was deathly afraid of that man. I couldn't look him in the eye or talk to him without stuttering. He asked me one day, "So when are you going to stop being such a f#@in p****?" He yelled at me for the slightest errors on my part; anything I did wrong at all, he would punish me for. He would go into my trailer and dump out all my gear on the floor. He banned me from the gym. I still continued to dissociate myself from the unit. One night two guys from the unit came into my room and asked me for some cookies my mom had sent from home. I refused to give them any and they got pissed off and stormed out. Minutes later the Major came into my room and dumped everything I owned in my travelbox out onto the floor and threw my TV down the floor and smash it. He moved me into the TOC and ordered me to sleep on the floor there. He said that there was a "smell" coming from the room and I had to be "forcibly hygiened", even though there was no smell and my personal habits are impeccable.

2 days later the Major took me to Mental Health to have me evaluated, and they said I had either Fragile X or Autism. They were going to send me back two weeks later to have me evaluated. The next day, however, I flew into a rage against that Major(an obese man), and I assaulted him in the middle of the TOC. I hit him 9 times before two other guys rushed in and pulled me off of him. I beat him within an inch of his life and his face was just a giant pulp of blood.

Things would have been worse for me if I hadn't been to that Mental Health visit a couple days earlier. They decided not to press charges(no one liked that major, and the 1SG was glad that someone beat the s**t out of him). Finally, anyway, because I had been seen by a doctor and clearly had mental problems all they did was take away my signing bonus and send me back to Ft. Bragg. One thing led to another and I was diagnosed with AS and by mid 2008 I was out of the army.

I am a hard man and I am hard on myself because I was taught to be that way. I will never compromise and I will never change. They will never deflower me.

Hi, Brusilov. That was interesting to read. You certainly must be a strong person to have come through those experiences and still be able to reflect on them so objectively. You sound as though you're very aware of your own strengths and weaknesses. I don't know that it's always a good idea to be hard on yourself, though. I think that sometimes it's better to compromise, to bend rather than break. Compromise and change aren't always bad things- sometimes we need to compromise so that we can interact with other people, and change can be for the better. And who are the "they" who "will never deflower" you? I hope you don't see the whole world as your enemy- there are a lot of good people in the world, too. You're still very young and your life may change in unexpected (and positive) ways yet. I hope so, sweetheart. Jenny

Hi, I didn't read the whole thing but it struck me that you seem to think along similar lines to myself, although for me that type of thinking isn't a constant - I more break in and out of it.

There's a sort of rightness about that drive towards complete perfection - a clarity that is missing in all other aspects of life.

The only way I know how to think and act is the way I have been taught; for better or worse. It is hard for me to accept that sometimes I have to compromise, because I fear that I might compromise on the wrong thing and jeopardize my personal integrity. See, I feel as if I have to keep up my guard every second of the day. I have an irrational(perhaps) fear of being exploited. I was taken advantage of by everyone I knew in my younger days and they used me for their own purposes; like if they needed someone to bully so that they would feel better about their own life. Until I was 22, I only lived to serve other people, and I was nothing more than a helpless body with no control over my life. I lived vicariously for those who were above me.

I feel that my strong will, and refusal to "bend", as you say, are my defining personality characteristics that set me on a higher level than everyone else. For years, I was shaped by my environment like a hunk of raw clay, and 24 years, later, for better or worse, here is the finished product. I have to take the good with the bad. In all of the ways I have been hardened, I think it was mostly for the better and I actually only have one real regret about my teenage years. But long ago, my TABULA RASA, my clean slate, was marked over and over again with the crude slashes of the NT world, and this is the result.

I never did anything special. All I ever did in my life was what I had to do to stay alive and keep my sanity. It was a world where Aspergers was tying both of my hands behind my back and I was playing on an uneven field with my peers while still being held to their standard. I was in tough situations that an AS person can not handle but I just did the best I could to adapt and in the end my best efforts came up short. I know I make errors in judgement and sometimes I pursue the wrong policy and say the wrong thing but no matter what I am decisive and confident and I will do what I have to do to stay alive and "maintain" myself. I never apologize for anything. Every day I feel like I am at war with the world. When it comes down to it, all we are doing is fighting to survive. Those who fall back will fall out and those who fall out will go under.

I was quoting Sir Thomas More when I stated that "They will never deflower me," and I think that quote has always had quite a profound effect on my behavior, especially in recent years. Basically, I will never sell out to contemporary culture, and I will never change who I am for the benifit of anyone else. I am going to do what I want/have to do, and I won't let anyone tell me that that I am wrong.

I have no right to judge the way you're choosing to live your life, and I certainly won't try to tell you you're wrong. It must be exhausting and difficult to always keep your guard up and feel as though you're at war with the world. I can understand why it would be a logical response to being hurt and exploited, though, especially if this happened regularly from when you were young.

You seem to have developed this fairly inflexible philosophy recently, in the past year or so. Did you start to think this way to cope with what happened to you in the army? In the long term I feel that there should be a lot more to living than just a grim struggle for survival, and I hope that you're able to enjoy life more one day. Are you still getting any counselling or support to help you deal with your army experiences?

I also wonder whether you have any friends or family members who you trust and let beneath your guard. I hope that you do- life can be very lonely if you don't have someone who you can be yourself with.

I'm not sure that there IS just one contemporary culture to "sell out" to- most young people now seem to belong to a particular tribe, each with its own clothes, music and interests. Maybe you'll find your tribe here on WP. It's not necessarily selling out to adopt some ideas from other people or have things in common with them. Not everyone is going to be like the people who tormented you at school and in the army.

I think it's good to stand by your beliefs up to a point, but sometimes it takes more strength to apologise for being wrong than to maintain defiance- apologising isn't always a sign of weakness. Remember, too, Sir Thomas More had some admirable ideas and he certainly stuck to his convictions, but he paid for it with his head.

Take care, Brusilov- it sounds like you're a hard guy with an even harder life.