Warning: I realize this is a family friendly site so i am putting a large disclaimer here that there is nothing filtered in this post. There are some controversial topics in here. However I am saying things like they are. Proceed with caution.
I just took the aspie-quiz and got a 113/200 (95/200 neurotypical)
I have taken the AQ test a while ago and I got a 38(above 32 shows autistic traits)
I am 18, I have one older brother and here is the story of my life.
While not every part of this has to do with me possibly being autistic, I just want to get all of this out. For anyone that wants to listen. I don't really have anyone in my life that I feel comfortable sharing everything with, even my parents. If you want to tell me anything about myself, I want to listen. Because I don't know what to do with my life.
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My entire life I have had social anxiety
When I was little i used to flap my hands at my sides a lot(I stopped at about 3rd grade)
I find it really hard to approach people
I find it hard to make new friends, but luckily I have a great set of friends who I am MUCH more confident around, I don't know what I would do without my current friends.
I find it hard to start/finish tasks, especially when I have no interest in it.
I have always struggled in school, I feel like I am really smart but I need more time to complete some things if I'm not "into" it because my mind wanders and thinks about everything.
I have an extremely hard time getting up in the morning for stuff, I almost got kicked out of school for being late. Whenever I wake up to my alarm clock it is one of the worst feelings I know. I just want to go back to sleep and back to dreamland where everything is so surreal and comfy. I have just blatantly turned off my alarm and went back to bed when I should have gone to school.
I have really sensitive eyes, ears, everything. High pitched/loud noises are the worst. The electrical resistance in a dimmer circuit for my kitchen lights generates this high pitched noise that drives me crazy. No one else seems to notice it.
I have a strong interest in music, and my dream job would be a music producer. My ears are certainly sensitive enough for the task of mixing/mastering, and I have experience working with Digital Audio Workstation software. I always say I'm going to make a bunch of songs and post them online for people to listen to and get feedback, but it never happens. I'm a perfectionist and I can never complete something.
If i tell my self I'm going to do something the only way I can do it is the right way. I really am a perfectionist. If i can't do something the right way from the start I often just give up and stop doing it completely. This contributed to a lot of my problems in school.(more on this later)
I am a very nice person if you get to know me, I try to always do what is right even if it's not the easiest thing for me personally. I have never been in a physical fight in my life, and I hope I never will be. I don't hold grudges and I really do try to respect and treat other people well. This isn't something that means very much coming from myself I'm sure everyone thinks they are a good person, but I do have a pretty good reputation, especially from people that actually know me.
I love driving. For most of my preteen/teen years I mowed lawns every summer and had a pretty good client base. At 25/30$ a lawn, + saved money from birthdays/christmas/allowance eventually I had $7000(i am very good with money, I don't spend on useless s**t), and I bought my first car. I found a 2003 Infiniti G35 on craigslist(I know, ridiculously nice for a first car, what if i crash it, well I haven't yet, its been over a year)for just under $9000 and paid my dad off the extra money he chipped in over few months later. I love being in my car more than anywhere else pretty much. I consider it more of my home than my room at my parents house. I have a lot of great memories in my car. I have taken it to 120+mph and I've had my fair share of fun in empty snowy parking lots, yet I have a perfect driving record. I've never even been pulled over. I consider myself a very good driver, as do my friends who have really seen me drive.
I find I have a lot of natural talent at lots of things, I am good at guitar, all kinds of video games, driving, music, sking, snowboarding, working with computers(I built my own when I was a sophomore in highschool), and many many small things. Yet I don't feel like i'm great at any of these things. I don't feel like i'm good enough to make a carrer out of any of these and I honestly don't know where I will be 4 years from now. I don't know what I want to do with my life.
During my first three years of high school I constantly had trouble getting good grades. I could not do homework assignments for the life of me, I hated doing something I had no interest in so much. I really wanted to do good and I did try hard a lot, but it just wasn't good enough.
During my Sophomore and Junior years in high school, I participated in the marching band and drumline. It was easily one of the best things I did. I made a lot of my friends in the band program and I don't know that my life would be like if I wasn't a part of it. During my junior year of high school our drumline got first place in our class out of all of the drumlines in the nation. We competed against 59 other drumlines and came out #1. I have a gold medal hanging on my mirror and still think about it as one of the proudest moments in my life, even if that memory was tainted later on(more on this later in the big paragraph).
Me any my friends are the kind to partake in certain activites that might be frowned upon by certain people, involving underage drinking and marijuana usage. Pot is one of the greatest things in this world, I respect that some people don't like it for whatever reason, but they're gonna have to respect that I do like it for whatever reason too.(I'm not sure what the policy on this is at Wrong Planet, but you will see later on this is contributes to my life and I can't just pretend it's not there just because this is a familty friendly site) I have come up with some of my greatest ideas while under the influence of pot, it makes able to see things in a different way than I normally would. Honestly the pros of smoking pot far outweigh the cons, especially in my specific situation(it's not risky at all). My dad used to be a pothead and is now president and ceo of his own company, and works from home. My mom used to be a pothead and she still is. In fact last week she asked me if I had any she could give her. They both know I smoke and they are fine with it, although my dad discourages it because he wants me to keep my job options open. Yet I make my own decisions in life and we are at a great understanding.
For my senior year of high school, I transfered to an alternative high school and loved it. Basically what they did there was they had everyone work only while in class, at their own pace, with no homework whatsoever. They also played music for class changes instead of bells, they had a specified area on campus where kids could go and smoke between class(I don't smoke cigarettes, never have, I hope i never will), they had open lunch so kids could just go to any of the local fast food places or restaurants, and there was no sense of high school drama like you would normally get because they treated everyone like adults there, so everyone acted like adults. I wrote the best essays I've ever written without even trying. I got on the AB honor roll and it was great. The only thing I missed was band and drumline from my base school, because they didn't have extracurricular activities at the alternative school. Some of the teachers didn't like how I was late and sometimes didn't work efficiently, but I just tried to tell them I would be fine, and whenever i got "into" the work, which I did about 60% of days, I would work much faster than the other students and I finished everything perfectly fine. But like I said I almost got kicked out because the staff/teachers didn't think I could do it, we me being late so much.
During senior year I also took a Music and Computer technology class at another regular high school in the county. It was basically the best class i've taken in my entire life. I got to play with music programs every day, the teacher would give us projects, usually involving making a song of a certain genre. I experienced getting "into" it with music as well. I would have strong days where I wrote almost an entire song, and I would have weak days when I would make no progress. The teacher was also a really smart and great guy, I think of him as a role model now. He really knew how to encourage creativity and growth. I was never late to this class because it started at 12:30pm, I would drive there after my classes at my alternative high school were finished.
I took an ASVAB test last year (used for us military recruitment) and I got an 88/99(which is pretty good, the test is designed in a way that your score means you are roughly in the __% of people who took the test, aka I'm in the top 88%) and I felt great when taking the test, I remember clearly being "into" it the entire time, it was a timed test too which I normally struggle at.(I bombed my SAT, for the essay section I wrote like two sentences, and I left many blanks due to not enough time. I don't remember what i got but it wasn't good)
I have always been oblivious to when girls have liked me looking back. Up until the last week of high school(more on this later), I had never entered a serious relationship with any girls, and I don't have many close friends who are girls. I had crushes on girls here and there, but I was always too shy to take action.
There was this one girl (we can call her K) that I liked but I considered more a friend. We knew each other from drumline at my base high school(not the alternative). Then one of my best friends(we can call him G) stole her away from this other guy she was going out with(I wasn't jealous or anything even though I liked her too, I had never vocalized my attraction to her, and I was gone at my alternative high school at this point). For the record G was a much better guy and her old boyfriend wasn't treating her well, even though it wasn't good to take her when she was already in a relationship. My friend K had bad problems with depression as long as I'd known her, and in april the worst possible thing happened. She killed herself. When I found out I was in Norway because I had a Norwegian friend who lived in the US because of his dads job, and he offered to take me there to go snowboarding. It was a surreal and awe inspiring trip up until the last day when I found out about my friends suicide. Later i found out that If I wasn't in Norway, I would have been with my friends(G and two others, were all really close, they tried to call me that night) when they found her dead. Yes my friends went looking for her after she said some scary stuff via text to G and then stopped responding. They found her hanging from a tree at a place she liked to go in the woods, and they tried CPR on her dead body. But what made it so much worse was my friend G was such a great guy, I had been friends with him since middle school and I knew the extent to which he loved K, I knew that K loved him back and that didn't have anything to do with the suicide. he was always there for her and I don't know anyone who could have helped her more than he did. It was so sad to see that things had gone so wrong. And I had no way of talking to him since I was in Norway and my cellphone obviously didn't work. This sent my friend G(who was normally the happiest most positive guy ever) into depression of his own. When I saw him at school I didn't know what to say, I had never lost anyone close to me in my entire life up until then, and G knew her so much better. When I saw him for the first time since the incident in school I asked him how he was doing and he just said "Horrible" while looking at the floor. I felt so clueless as what to say, I just stood there in awkward silence for a while. But then he looked up and asked, "How was Norway?" (because my Norwegian friend had taken him the year before, we were in a tight group of friends). I said it was a lot of fun, but I felt bad at the same time, because what was(aside from K) the best spring break of my life was certainly the worst spring break of his life and I didn't want to emphasize that too much. Then a few days later G just disappeared from school without any word to us(his friends). A little while later his dad gave me a call and explained everything. Apparently he had tried to kill himself too due to the depression and constantly being reminded every day at school. Luckly he failed and I guess told his parents, so he left the area to go live with his brother with no phone where he didn't have to deal with being reminded every second of every day. He had even left me his ticket to go see the Red Hot Chili Peppers(his favorite band the ticket cost him over 100$, him and my friend C were going to go together) because he couldn't go. I really didn't want to take the ticket because of how f****d up everything was but I did and C and I went, and RHCP played great. G came back for her funeral and it was not a pretty sight. To this day I still don't know exactly what caused K to go over the edge, but right before the funeral I found out a big detail that makes this whole ordeal more f****d up. I found out from G that our drumline instructor, a teacher, had sex with K soon before she killed herself. I assume K told G before she went. I know it wasn't rape or anything forced by our instructor, K was a kinda promiscuous person, and I can only hope that our drumline instructor wasn't that f****d up of a person. I played the same instrument as K during my two years in the drumline and I had generally thought that our instructor was a pretty good guy until I found out what had happened. G was also in the drumline and the instructor knew that G and K were going out. This whole ordeal happened during the drumline season(I wasn't at this school anymore however) and for the rest of the season until G left the area, G said he couldn't stand to look at our instructor for what he did, but at this point he had not told any authorities. Going back to the funeral, our instructor was there. G said that he was might just snap and told us(his close friends) to hold him back if he did. Eventually he did tell somebody and after the school year finished our instructor was fired and banned from all school related jobs in our county. There was nothing in the news about it and everything was done quietly. Since then G came back to the area and is doing great now. He's back to his old self and I'm truly proud to be his friend. I now know the meaning of strength. And how f****d up this world is. I swear to you every word in this is true.
I got my first job working at McDonalds, I would usually work at the drive-thru payment window taking orders over the intercom and payment at the window at the same time. It was easy because I can repeat a task over and over without being bothered too much. I would spend a lot of time just looking out the window at the passing cars, the trees, and thinking about random stuff, letting my mind wander. Even while taking orders over the intercom sometimes. I was pretty good at my job, the managers liked me and my drawers always had the right amount of money(our mcdonalds was sooo busy it was not uncommon for a few dollars to be missing from bad money handling. I'm talking like drive thru line wrapped around the store for hours straight no breaks).
During my time at mcdonalds I met a girl there who I immediately felt attracted to since the first time I saw her(we can call her D). I am a very shy/socially anxious person, but the managers put me next to her to help her work at the food presentation window on one of her first days to help her, and it was good to break the ice early. Then over the course of a few weeks, we started talking on the intercom system a lot(there is a way to only communicate with other headsets, so we could talk privately from across the store while working). Eventually she said that we should exchange numbers, and from there everything couldn't have went better. I asked her out and she accepted, this being my first date I had ever been on I took her to a restaurant and then we went to the park and played frisbee. Everything continued to go amazing. This was the first serious relationship I had ever entered into, and I loved her so much, we had so much in common.(even some of the things I'm coming here about) On our second date I told her that I smoked weed and drank with my friends a lot and she was a little surprised. She said she wanted no part of it be could be together if I never talked to her while under the influence. And I respected that, and I loved her, so I did never talk to her while under the influence, and I knew she didn't like it so I kept that in mind. I told her that I would never try to make her do something like that since that's what she wanted. And I never did. We were happy together but she had a lot of personal problems. She was clinically depressed all the time due to past trauma(that I won't even try to get into), and she had tried to kill herself 5 times in her life.(I didn't help that I had already experienced a suicide with my friend K, and I couldn't talk to D about it because I didn't want to put those type of thoughts in her head. I did tell her that one of my friends had killed herself once but I didn't go into details with D). She was the first girl I kissed, and we kissed a lot. But never anything more, because we were both new to everything. One weekend she took me with her to her families lake house and we went tubing together on their boat, and spent the whole day having fun and relaxing with her and her family. Her parents liked me too, and I liked her parents. It was honestly one of the best days of my life. Things continued to go great until one week she was just so stressed out from life. She told me that she had slipped and started cutting herself again(she used to have bad problems before I knew her), and that she had to drop out of summer school, and she was just so depressed in general she couldn't eat without puking it back up. I tried to be as supportive and helpful as I possibly could be. We had been going out for over a month at that point. During that week it was one of my friends birthdays and on that night I went out and got a little too drunk with my friends. The next day I had a bad hangover and i smoked some weed to cure the nausea/headaches. The only problem was that morning I was supposed to go and meet her at her house as we planned the day before. I eventually texted her and told her everything about why I couldn't see her that day. She said that my drug/alcohol use was hurting our relationship and that something had to happen. She presented me with two options. I could either quit smoking and drinking and we could continue going out, or we couldn't be together. It was something that I hoped would never happen, but it did. I had always thought about what if this happened and I already knew my answer. I would rather be with her. I loved her so much, the time that we were going out was the best time of my life. I wanted to be a light in her life that would help her forget about her past and she could be happy, because she is a truly great person deep down. I liked weed and alcohol but those are potentially risky and were only a small part of my life, of course I would give it up for her. She seemed surprised by my answer, but thankful and happy(I was making a pretty big commitment to her), and said that she wanted to see me the next day. So the next day I went over to her house and we talked about it more. She told me even more about the extent of her depression and the severe drugs(anti-psychotic) she was taking to help(I feel this is may be why she didn't like alcohol/weed, although she never said this was why) this was the first bump in our relationship, and we tried to made up, but something didn't feel right. The magic was gone, and we started talking more. I could kinda tell she wanted some room to figure things out, so I brought up the idea of maybe taking some time to figure things out on our own and then we'll see how we feel. She eventually said she wanted to break things off for a while and that's what we did. For that week, I kept my promise, I didn't smoke or drink even though I was hanging out with my friends who were doing it because I still loved her. Then I texted her asking if she wanted to talk and she replied, "...about what?" and I said about us and she said she didn't know what she wanted and she wanted to stay not together. That hurt because I still loved her. Obviously I didn't have to keep my promise about not drinking or smoking but I still felt guilty every time I did it for a few weeks. I kept quiet hoping that she would try to talk to me again at some point, but I didn't hear from her for over a month. I sent her a few texts asking just "Hey, hows it going? we haven't talked in a while." and she replied with answers like "good, you?" and then she stopped all together. It still hurts a little bit because everything was going so great, no problems whatsoever until that one day, and everything has been completely gone since. And I don't hate her for it because I know it's entirely possible that she wasn't ready to have a serious relationship due to her serious depression/personal problems, but she never said it was that. She never told me what it was. I told her I would quit weed and alcohol for her and I meant it. I really feel like there is something she never told me. I have moved on because it's the only way out. I can only hope that it was for the best for both of us but I still feel like I don't know the truth.
Since then I quit my job at McDonalds due to sh***y working conditions(they never had enough employees and I would always get called in on my off days when I didn't want to work, and then I would come in and they would say "you can get off at 9pm." and then 9 would come and they would say 10. and then 10 would come and they would say 11. and I put up with it for a while but eventually I said f**k this.
I have also started taking classes at my local community college. This is my first semester and I hate it. I have gone to visit some of my friends at the universities they go to, and it is so awesome, living on their own, with other kids their age, studying for a great degree, and doing whatever they want with their free time. I wish I could go back in time and get my s**t together and do good in high school. At community college it's nothing I wanted. The classes are just like high school. We are graded on attendance and class participation. I was hoping to go to an environment where I could sit in on lectures if I needed to and just do good on exams to get good grades. Because that's what I'm good at. I'm not good at doing pointless homework and other assignments that I don't care at all about, and I won't learn anything useful from. I actually really like learning, I go on google and youtube and look up explanations for things i'm curious about all the time. I just hate how the education system is set up. It doesn't work with me. I'm pretty sure I'm already failing my English 111 class due to not doing the stupid readings and not participating in the class discussions because of it. and that means I won't be able to transfer to an actual university after 2 years if I don't have at least a 3.0 GPA. I still haven't found another job either(although I'm not really looking).
I'm considering talking to an Air Force Recruiter soon. I did get an 88 on the ASVAB which could get me into training for almost any job in the Air Force, and I have an interest in airplanes and technology. My grandfather was a refueling plane pilot for the air force too. I don't know if I would like a military life though. I feel like there isn't much freedom there, and I don't like this country anyways. It's always been my dream to move to Canada. But thats another story.
I am just completely lost at this point. I am not the type of person to get depressed, I just keep my head up and keep pushing though. I can always look on the bright side of things, however my confidence is wearing thin. I feel like if i'm going to keep things under control at community college I will need some help with my possible autism, because this past year I have been learning more and more about it and I am almost convinced I have a mild case. I can't function in this world trying to be perfectly fine when I'm not, even though that's how i've been almost my entire life.
Any advice? I have spoken and now I am here to listen
26 Sep 2012, 7:56 pm
you win.
So overwhelming that I didn't read it all but enough to say that you probably are on the Autism Spectrum.
