How did you feel before you related your condition to AS?

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I felt that I might be crazy in one way or another, or just stupid. The stupid thing was later ruled out cause my iq scores. I felt it very hard to feel weird and not be able to understand why.

Obviously having had no experience with autism, mental retardation, or any other disorder, I would often tell my wife, "sometimes I feel as if I may be mildly ret*d.' I would tell her, "the world doesn't make sense to me; I always seem to be in a trance-like state" and things like that.

I was very suicidal...yet again. interestingly since understanding about the mechanics of how AS operates within me, my suicidal tendencies have lessened considerably. I am no longer just hanging around on this earth for the sake of my son - which is how it felt early 2008. actually, the suicidal tendencies haven;t lessened or just diminished. they are gone.

Millie this is very interesting to hear. I was attributing my possible AS to my father, but now that you mentioned this, perhaps I need to think harder about my mother. She has threatened suicide many times and told me that the only thing keeping her around was her sons. I realize depression isn't always related to AS, but having seen you make this statement does make me wonder if, perhaps, there isn't more to my mother's depression.

To both of you. I have depressions from time to time, not so serious that I really think of sucide as a way out, much due to my family, who really cares and vice versa. I have that much emphaty in me, that I really feel sorry for ppl that feels that life is so hard to deal with, that they become sucidal. I know four persons who commited sucide, because of depression.
To millie; I'm glad you don't have those sucidal thoughts anymore, the world will loose a great artist if you go.

Poor social skills were really tearing me up inside. I just could not understand why this was such a problem for me when it seemed so easy (or easier) for most other people. This was before I had heard of AS. Then one day I heard Tony Attwood being interviewed on the radio. I could relate to many of the things he talked about but not all. That was two years ago. I'm now quite sure that I do have AS but feel more relaxed than I did previously. I can accept that this is "just the way I am" & no longer have that particular confusion going on in my mind. There is plenty of other confusion though!

I thought I was just not fit for the culture I grew up in. but after living in other countries I found out that people are all the same everywhere you go. so I just started thinking that I must be insane.

like a loser, well, at the age of 29 i had never been in a relationship. now i at least know why. although it doesn't change the fact that i am a loser in this matter.

That is almost exactly like me. I heard a famous writer talk about her AS on the radio, and started to look for sites about AS on the web. Finding WP, it all made sense.

I think that my lifelong battle with suicidal thoughts are part of my 'black and white' thinking. If life is unfulfilled then the opposite would be the better choice. When ever I felt I was 'disrespected' I would opt to check out rather than figure out another option.

Before I knew about AS I thought it was me being JADED with life, when I obviously didn't FEEL like other people did about life. I reasoned I had been debauched in my early life and had become so utterly JADED about life that I didn't have the bond with life and my body that other people seemed to. Well, all that may be true, but about a week before I first heard about AS I was boppin' down the hall at work and wondered if I was ever going to grow up (I was 56 years old at the time).

I think that was a demonstration of what I thought was happening to me before I knew about AS. I second the notion that I was 'ret*d' and to this day, I still rankle when someone says something they are doing dumb is 'ret*d'.

Merle

Great to read your post. Oregon and Washington is my favorite states in USA, I'd really like to live there.
In many things, I also feel that I never really grew up, especial emotionally

Thought that was stupid, lazy and mentally ill. Had much anxiety but that disappeared when learned about Asperger syndrom.

Yeah, like me, it finally made sense, somehow.

I thought I had some form of latent schizophrenia and would develope voices at some point.

I am glad that its not that which is wrong with me but I think aspergers still has a lot of the same problems about it, such as being life long and having lots of stigma attached to it.

It was nice to have some explanation for my funny ways but also has made people dismiss my experience of things and my family is much more patronising.

hey mosez and others. thanks. depression and ASD's are often co-morbids, but this does not mean that people who are depressed are necessarily on the spectrum. for me , the many years of battling life and depression - the round peg in the triangle way of being, the sensory issues, the reduced contact with people, the difficulty with people and communication with them, the rigid routines and the intensity of EVERYthing i do if it matters to me - these and other things, the impaired social skills which were most pronounced in the first half of my life, the stimming and funny twitches i get...all of this now makes sense. i have stated before that one of my internal questions that would go round and round in me was "what is wrong with me? what is wrong with me? what is wrong with me?" FOr years and years this question. for years and years that very sad sense that i am behind a glass pane and i cannot quite reach other people when i am with them. there was just something jarring the smoothness of relating. yes. that is a good way to put it.

i am very relieved. i am still processing so much about having AS. but now at least, i am not such a mystery to myself. I have a kind of weird centre to myself - not like other people. it cannot be accessed in relation to other people in the way other people seem to do it. i am very fragmented. i feel like machine girl. sometimes when everyone around me has certain feelings i have none. OR, i have the wrong feelings. At serious things i make my adult siblings laugh. They will start saying , "oh oh, here she goes - we'd better take her outside before she starts making cat yowls next to that coffin." That exact line never occurred - it is a bit of artistic license - but they have said similarly. "oh -oh ,here goes millie......" these are my weird emotional responses to things. when others are crying, i am laughing hysterically or trying to get them to laugh. everything is just really that little bit out of kilter. just that tiny bit.

i might just stop here.......getting all confused.....

I do not know. I just felt different. It was the greatest day (I guess) of my life when I finally had a name to what made me so different.