I say I feel screwed, because now I`m fairly positive I have something "real" I have to deal with, and it's daunting.
I have spent most of my life trying to avoid things that I just had so much trouble contending with. Things like school, work, relationships. Just anything to do with people. I basically fashioned an under achieving but somewhat tolerable life for myself. A bubble where I didn't have to face these issues so much, and could block them out of my mind for the most part.
I have seen counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists in the past. None of the meds really seemed to help, and none of the diagnoses seem to really jive with what was happening with me more on an everyday and global basis.
Aspergers is the only thing that actually has really made sense to me, and describes what I have been and continue to go through everyday. What people talk about here is all the stuff I've been keeping inside and trying to ignore while trying to go about my life as aloof and unattached as possible to avoid getting hurt and repeating the same situations I always seem to find myself in when it concerns people.
A lot of my characteristics I thought were just my quirks. I never really thought about them and never talked about them to anyone, let alone professionals, but they all seem to fall in line with Aspergers. Everything from the routines, eye contact, monotone voice, lack of empathy, trouble reading social situations, responding with scripts learned from trial & error, having a narrow special interest that I`m obsessed about, lack of real friendships, the meltdowns, only being able to contend with socializing in short bouts, but not knowing when to leave or shut up if the topic is something I'm really into, the verbal awkwardness, either speaking too loud or too soft and having family always on my case about it, etc. etc. I could go on and on.
Reading this forum is like reading my own personal diary if I cared to keep one. It's kind of eerie how the people here know what it's like to be me. I have never seen such accurate descriptions that resemble my life since childhood.
I've rarely been so certain of something in regards to my life as I am now. Especially, after watching a bunch of youtube vids done by people with Aspies, and talking with my GF about it before she went to bed. She's a social worker who has worked with kids with Aspies here and there, which I just found out about tonight after asking her specifically about it. She is the only person I really have regular contact with, and she thinks there is a strong possibility I may have it as well just from what she has observed.