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Hi everyone.

I've only recently been understanding what Asperger's is. I had no idea what autism really was even until recently, when my 3 year old daughter was diagnosed. As I was reading about it, I began to think, holy mary mother of god, a lot of these things apply to me.

I've spent most of my life not fitting in anywhere but that didn't necessarily mean anything to me. I'm 38 years old. Reasons why I think I may have Asperger's:

1. I have a lot of motor skills issues. When I was about 12, I began noticing it. I cannot sprint for more than 30 meters without my legs buckling -- they just seem to get lost and don't know what to do. It's like my brain just "runs out of space" (for lack of a better analogy) to send messages to my legs after 30 m. It happens everytime I run for a bus, or have to sprint for any reason. It's always 30 m.

2. Very early speech development. I started speaking at 4 months, but I did not understand what I was saying. I had echolalia for a long time.

3. Motor skills delay as an child. I did not start walking until I was 2.5 years old. I still have other motor skills issues. I cannot hit a ball with a bat even if a 5 y.o. throws it to me. I cannot kick a ball running up to it -- my foot will miss it. I cannot ride a bike, I just cannot balance on it no matter how hard I try. Anything that involves a slightly more complex level of motor coordination, I cannot do.

4. I have problems with eye contact, particularly in environments/periods of time when I have a lot of exposure to fluorescent lights. If I'm in a meeting with someone, I feel vertigo because the background around them starts spinning. I cannot look at a person in the face while they are talking. Too much information coming in and I feel overwhelmed. My eyes start to burn. And if I force myself to try to maintain eye contact with them, the room starts spinning and the burning gets worse and it feels like it hurts in my eyeballs because my eyes are trying to look somewhere else so that it doesn't have to keep seeing the constant movements on the person's face as they are talking. I want to maintain eye contact when I'm at work because I think it looks like I'm hiding something or not paying attention if I don't look at the person. But it feels very, very uncomfortable and some days it hurts...so I work freelance now where I never meet my clients and I just correspond with people electronically.

5. I kept fish for a while. Not just a tank, but hundreds -- more fish than I could count. I don't know, I just wanted to do it and my whole life revolved around it. I had about 30+ tanks that I lived with in an industrial space. The tanks ranged from 50 gallons to 500 gallons. All lit by fluorescent lights. At the time, I also worked in an office with fluorescent lights during the day. I had about 18 to 22 hours of exposure to fluorescent lights every day for about 5 years. I began having these "attacks". I didn't know why they were happening at the time. Suddenly my head would go into this place where it felt like I was going to die and it felt like the whole world was caving in, accompanied by nausea or a knot in the stomach. I would have to mentally hang on and it would last for about 2 to 5 minutes and then, it would just disappear. I would feel it coming on and know what I was in for and would have to hang on until it passes. I recently learned about a type of mini seizure and it described exactly what I felt -- "impending doom." These stopped when I moved out of the place with all those fluorescent lights and I stopped working in an environment with fluorescent lights.

6. When I was around the fluorescent lights, I would see each pulse. It drove me nuts. I had just assumed that everyone could see what I was seeing. I assumed that everyone hated fluorescent lights as much as I did for that reason. Still, it didn't register in my head that I may have been experiencing a sensory processing issue until when I read about it when my daughter was diagnosed with autism. I asked my friend one day if those bugged him and he had no idea what I was talking about with regards to the pulsing.

7. I flapped my hands and walked on my toes until I was 12. I wasn't even aware of doing it until other kids in my class started imitating and mocking me about it. Even my best friend at the time laughed, she said it was true, that I did move like that. I was talking about it to a friend I've known for a long time, about hand flapping, and she laughed and told me that I *STILL* do it when I'm talking.

8. Even in the sweltering heat of summer, I cannot sleep unless I have a very very heavy comforter over me. I needed the sensation of something heavy over me before I could relax enough to fall asleep. It didn't matter how warm or hot the room was. I only recently learned about other individuals on the spectrum who experience this and that there are such things as weighted blankets to address this sensory issue. I was floored when I read about it...that this was a sensory issue. Again, I assumed that everyone liked the feeling of something heavy over them when they sleep. It never occurred to me that this is a "sensory issue" until only recently.

9. Patterns. I cannot stop seeing the patterns everywhere and in everything. I sometimes think maybe I see patterns even when maybe none exist (or so people around me tell me sometimes). I have a tendency to extrapolate patterns from everything. I like looking at aggregates -- any mass multiples of any of the same thing -- grass, ants, stones, paragraphs (aggregates of letters). The whole world around me disappears and I like to see the patterns/shapes/geometry of how the aggregates form when they come together. I need to run downstairs when the washing machine is pumping out all the water. I feel compelled to stop everything I'm doing to see how the dirt that comes out of our clothes accumulate with the swirling of the water and the pattern it forms depending on the type of dirt that comes out of our clothes. I like patterns maybe more than the average person. I may be quicker at seeing patterns in things than the average person. I don't have a problem with this aspect of why I think I may have Asperger's, but I think that maybe it's there because of other underlying things.

10. I don't like being touched. I'm somewhat ok with it if it's my kids or my husband. But I don't like constant touching on the skin. For the longest time, people thought I was weird. Guys that I went out with would get really annoyed at me because I would get really agitated and squeamish when someone would caress my arm -- the building painful sensation with each caress. It's supposed to be a loving gesture but I hated it because it hurt. I didn't understand it. Why did it not hurt anyone else? I would get angry sometimes and do it right back to the guy -- "see how you like it" kind of a thing but it didn't bother them. Before I knew anything about autism, I had no idea that this was a sensory issue or that such a thing even existed, or that this was an underlying thing that is part of something larger that has bigger significance.

11. I cannot get organized no matter what. I'm not just a little disorganized. Nothing in my life is organized. I get into trouble all the time with everything because I cannot keep track of everything. It takes me about 2 hours to leave the house because I don't know where to start to gather my stuff together. I used to carry around a very large backpack everywhere with my whole life in it -- just so I could leave my dwelling. It would take hours for me to gather things to leave and then it would be too late to go to wherever I had to go, so I had to have a pack with everything I would possibly need in it. It was heavy and weighed about 30 lbs. and I carted that everywhere because I needed to. I don't know where to begin to start organizing. I don't know where to start organizing. Everything is everywhere. And this IS a problem. The admin work for my freelance stuff is everywhere, and I don't know where to start organizing the work I do. I have a problem with billing my clients and it grows to such crisis proportions that I think I lose a lot of money because I forget about projects I've done and I don't remember to invoice. My whole system sucks. My whole sense of any kind of organization sucks supremely -- far more than the average disorganized person.

12. Social problems. Well, this is the least of my issues but may be worth mentioning. I have trouble making friends or finding things to talk about with people. I prefer to do things alone so I don't have to find little chit chat things to talk about. I have trouble making friends because a lot of people think I'm weird because they don't get as "involved" in their interests as I do. For example, I like photography a lot and I have trouble making friends who will do this with me because I like to talk about it to a technical level where it bores a lot of people, even people who kind of like photography, too. It gets like this with a lot of things even when I have common interests with people. I hesitate to speak my mind sometimes because I see the bored look on people when I get really involved in a discussion about something I like but I can't stop talking about it. They try to change the subject but if I continue speaking to them, my brain stays on that same track and I have problems changing the subject. And I only found out recently that this may also stem from the same thing as all my other issues (I wouldn't have guessed this in a million years before I knew anything about autism).

And these reasons I've listed are only the surface reasons. I think I still have another ~40 reasons that are too long to list here.

I don't have a formal diagnosis but I think that some of these things might indicate I have Asperger's. I'm still not sure if I do or not or what to make of it all.

Welcome!

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Hello and welcome aboard the Wrong Planet, gnomederwear.

Hello, welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome, gnomederwear