Hi!
I'm the dude in the corner. The creepy one you usually ignore.
In a physical setting, that is how I could have introduced myself. But on the Internet there are no corners. Either that or they are all very large, because there seem to be some more people sitting in the same corner as me.
I am a 20-year old tech fetishist with no friends. It's not that I hate people, I just don't feel the desire to join their game. The "social game". Why can't people just be nice and accepting, without requiring all those unnecessary non-verbal rituals of passing? I have tried to play by the rules, but no one handed me the instruction booklet. I have tried to pretend being one of "them". One of the "normal" people. It eats all my energy and leaves me depressed at night, wondering if I have said the right words to the right person at an appropriate time. Concluding from my situation, apparently I haven't.
This is a significant cause of distress, since "social competence" is required to get any job these days. Right now I'm studying though (or rather, I should be), so my income is based on a student loan provided by the government (which would be the government of Sweden, by the way), but I know that in the future this will become more and more of an issue for me.
My daily life is basically the same every day: Waking up, getting on the bus, sleeping through a couple of lectures, buying a sandwich, sleeping through a couple of lectures, getting on the bus, warming a particular brand of deep-frozen pizza, studying. Although "studying" often involves loosing concentration and reaching for the computer to tweak my operating system, organize my music collection or do some programming. With that being said, my grades are not suffering. Although I feel I could use my time better so as to not cause insane stress around deadlines.
Even though my IQ is above average, I have problems to live a normal life. I have never had a girlfriend (or boyfriend for that matter), have constantly been bullied, back-stabbed and ignored. I avoided "Physical Education" in school because I felt it was stupid and because of low self-esteem. I am clumsy and often absent-minded, was always seen as "the odd one". When conversing I often end up talking at length about myself or something I am particularly interested in. After the other person has remained silent for five minutes, I slowly realize they might not be as interested as I thought. I know I should have learnt to avoid doing this, but sometimes it just feels appropriate to bring up those subjects. It's just so hard to determine when I should shut up.
Since I have such a hard time reading other people, I have become very suspicious. I always look for clues about what they might be thinking about me, and often I misinterpret them. I have hurt my parents several times by accusing them of believing certain things about me, when I have in fact misread their signals completely.
A defining moment in my life was a couple of years ago, one of the last weeks in high school, when a girl in my class I never used to talk to let slip out that I was always being "so unemotional and impersonal". The funny thing is that for three years I thought I had been showing too many emotions in class. I was just trying to keep it on a "normal" level.
Emotions: I have them, I just don't know how to show them in an appropriate manner. When I get excited, I get too excited. When I feel sad, I might just break down crying on the spot. Regardless, people are freaked out and turn their backs on me.
I have always wondered: What is wrong with me? Why can't I just be like the others? Why can't I find parties and small-talk meaningful? Why do I think football is ret*d? Why can't I just behave the way they expect me to?
So then we come to this whole labeling thing. I don't have a formal diagnosis of Asperger's or anything else, and quite frankly I don't want one either. A diagnosis is a way for society to put you in a little box with a label on it. So that they can apply a set of rules for dealing with you. I would risk getting denied my driver's license and I would get dismissed by employers simply because of a term on a piece of paper. People would look at me as if my personality were consistent with one of the stereotypical images painted by the media, when in fact I am just as complex of an individual as the rest of us.
For the same reasons as above, I don't assign myself labels according to political, (non-)religious belief, nationality, musical taste, social status or anything else unless absolutely needed. And I certainly am not going to let the government label me autistic. But, that being said, I do think about this issue a lot. And it would, on the other hand, be a relief to find out if there are others like me. Even if that would mean accepting a label, though not through an official diagnosis.
That is why I am here. Even if you dismiss my self-diagnosis of what society has determined to call "Asperger's Syndrome", I still feel I have many problems (and gifts) in common with you. So I hope we can get along and thoroughly discuss these things.
Thank you for caring enough to read through this post. Please respond with your thoughts.
Last edited by ThePresence on 19 Oct 2009, 5:30 pm, edited 4 times in total.
18 Oct 2009, 8:23 pm
