A history of obsessions

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When I was in kindergarten, there was one day that my teacher had chosen to tell us about dinosaurs. She brought a book to read to us at story time. It changed my life forever.

As a child, I did not understand why, but I had an obsession with them. I knew thousands of extinct species, and everything about them I could possibly know, especially their names and what their names meant (in Latin). I can't remember if I could read at that point, so I am not completely certain how I acquired all that information, but my obsession went way beyond simply knowing about them; during recess, I would pretend to be a dinosaur, chasing my classmates and other children around. And the day my teacher brought the book about dinosaurs, I could not control my outbursts when she mispronounced their names, and every time she read false passage from the book, I had to interrupt her and supply my classmates with the truth about them. It did not take long before I was chastised by my teacher and ostracized by my classmates for my behavior. Eventually, I lost my interest in dinosaurs, as well as my interest in being social and having friendships, and I found a new obsession that would put me into further isolation: insects. My peers had bullied me so much, that I stopped caring about labels like "weirdo".

I think learning about dinosaurs was my way of making sense of the world around me. I wanted to understand where life came from, and learning about dinosaurs through the fossil record was a self-introductory course to historical geology and biology/evolution. In retrospect, I interpret my own behavior as though I was using my interest as a social tool to help me overcome anxiety about talking to people. However, I did not understand that some specific behaviors were inappropriate, and because I didn't "get it", I became an outcast.

Unfortunately, my interests and behaviors have become more intense with age. I find that I am still wildly interested in perusing fossil records and historical geology in general, but I have completely immersed myself in other interests; one being historical linguistics, and another being computer programming. There are whole days of my life that I have dedicated to Scandinavian runestones and cross-comparison of nouns and verbs in various Germanic languages, and others that I have wasted on ideas for video games that I probably will never bother to commit myself to. All of these studies and interests are without a goal or a scope. I still find myself attempting to bring them to the table when I meet up with my friends and we are having a conversation. Instead of blurting out my thoughts, though, I tend to start the conversation and observe the rest of it until I become uninterested and decide to change the topic again, because I have anxiety - I know that if I behave in a way that is natural for me, my friends will think I am annoying. I am aware that my behavior is obsessive. I am not pleased with knowing only what is necessary - when I read about something, I investigate and accumulate details instead of summarizing.

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Thank you for taking the time to read/skim my post. Please feel free to comment or ask questions. I am not diagnosed with autism/AS, but think that it is a possibility. I feel that if others with are diagnosed with autism/AS it will help me deal with my anxiety and give me confidence to seek professional help.

I completely understand what you are talking about and can relate to it entirely.

I don't have any friends and prefer it that way. I have a wife and three kids and that is more than I can cope with. Some individuals have attached themselves to me in the past and I guess they were friends, but always, I push them away. I don't do this consciously; I just can't handle the attention. Alternatively, I start rambling on about some subject or other and people just evacuate the area. I have to make special efforts to ensure my wife does not feel that I'm pushing her away. We have been married 16 years so I think she has figured that I'm not going anywhere despite my rather distant manner.

My particular brand of obsession was wildlife, geography (maps), the Bible (read that from beginning to end including the boring genealogical bits by the time I was 13 yrs of age), then birdlife, then trees and plants. I became obsessed by sin and forgiveness and prayed to God incessantly such that I had to be careful not to finish phonecalls or conversations by saying 'Amen' instead of 'good bye'. I said 'Amen' once to a stranger on the phone and was absolutely traumatised with myself. I think that had some part to play in the telephone phobia I developed in my teens.

Currently I am obsessed with economic collapse, conspiracy theories (prophetic-based ones mainly), the rise and fall of civilisations, peak oil etc and in my work I am a systems/process propellor-head. Couldn't be happier.

Alas, we should all be tenured professors at Ivy league universities. Then we'd be standard blowhards instead of aspie weirdos.