I am now seriously thinking that I am an undiagnosed Aspergers girl, although I am now almost 40. This rings so many bells with me growing up.
My parents thought everything was fine, as I was very early in language development, was reading pretty well at age 2, and performing "The Tea-Pot Song" on cue. All the adults thought I was the cutest thing ever.
But within weeks of starting in school trying so hard to get other kids to like me, and being blanked left, right and centre.
And of course no adults had seen a problem. To them I was very advanced, apart from those inappropriate times in school when I couldn't wait for the other children to come up with the answer and felt I had to shout it out. But of course that just meant I was a bit rude, and a penalty would sort me out, except it didn't.
And because I'd been marked by everyone as "different", bullies naturally started in on me fairly sharpish. Even when we moved to the city when I was in my 3rd year of school (age 6), the stigma seemed to follow me.
I did manage to make 1 friend in the new school, Susan, but that was no protection, as she seemed to be as much at sea with the whole integration system as I was. Perhaps she was an Asperger too. Everything seemed fine when we'd invite each other home for Saturday, but we were both completely at sea in school, and she seemed afraid or unwilling to spend yard-time with me, so we'd each just wander around on our own then. I found that especially confusing.
I also had a younger sister, Brenda, who I am ashamed to say I used to bully horribly. I just got these horrible feelings of unclean-ness, because we shared a bedroom, and they seemed to get worse each year, until our parents finally did up the box-room as a bedroom for me, I think because they saw I was blighting Brenda's life, and causing her still to bed-wet at age 8. I felt they did not want to indulge me, but saw no other option.
I did WANT to make myself get along with Brenda. One time (couple years before the separate bedrooms) I even told my mother Brenda was invited to Susan's for Saturday too, as I wanted to be able to include her. But I didn't say anything to Susan, as I was afraid. So when she turned up along with me, and my mother explained to Susan's mother about Brenda's spare underpants, and left her along with me, well that may have been the first time Susan's family experienced the confusion that was my daily bread and butter!
Over the following few years, I did well in school as regards grades, but could not seem to behave appropriately from the other girls' point of view, and when my parents moved my brother (who was dyslexic) to a private mixed school to get him away from teachers who did not believe in his condition (he was supposed by them to be "just lazy", as he was obviously intelligent), I soon clamoured to get moved to his school too.
Well, talk about out of the frying-pan into the fire! The teens in the convent school I'd been at before had just struggled to understand where I was coming from: obviously very intelligent girl, seemingly unable to interpret normal social cues, but as I was placed in a high stream, most of them were pretty mature and hadn't given me a hard time, just found it a little difficult to figure out how to fit me into their activities. They were a terrific bunch, and I should have given them more of a chance.
Because the new school was small, so didn't even have streams for most things until a couple years after I joined, and as it was a mixed school they were also more socially experienced than the class I had come from, and also far less willing to forgive a little social ineptitude, where I had struggled before, now I completely floundered. Again scholastic aptitude made it all much more difficult for them to understand. Possibly hardest for me at this stage was how I wanted to debate things with my Mum - politics, theology, philosophy, whatever - but she would find that the manner I did this very repellent, and would even retreat in tears sometimes, which I found utterly confusing,but which makes so much sense now in the context of how Aspergers debate can seem to other people.
Anyway, while I have been to college, I have never managed to finish a degree, as I always found some reason to run away and retreat. I did find an amazing man 16 years ago, whom I love unreasonably, and also often treat unreasonably, I'm ashamed to say, but who somehow seems to put up with my weird idiosyncracies, and even with my habitually retreating from him. We married early last year, which I think was a horribly selfish act by me, and an incredibly unselfish one by him, as I mostly can't stand someone breathing in the same room as me when I try to sleep (try being the operative word: chronic insomniac!) So I generally sleep in the spare room, and if he's very lucky I'm in the mood to spend an hour "snuggling", as Marge Simpson would say, first.
I'm not looking to get formally diagnosed. I avoid doctors like the plague anyway, and developed an early horror of psychiatrists when my parents tried to get one to figure me out when I was 9 or 10, but he failed utterly, and I got the impression he was trying to get my parents to get me away from him by the end! I had completely dismissed Aspergers for me a long time ago, as I had only heard of how the cases tend to go in boys, but had never heard of a girl with it until very recently, and now that I have this sounds like my life to the T.
As I say, have no desire for an actual diagnosis, but would like to hear what you lot think, whether I'm on the right lines, and if so, maybe get to chew over this crazy world with y'all a bit.
Mep out.
My parents thought everything was fine, as I was very early in language development, was reading pretty well at age 2, and performing "The Tea-Pot Song" on cue. All the adults thought I was the cutest thing ever.
But within weeks of starting in school trying so hard to get other kids to like me, and being blanked left, right and centre.
And of course no adults had seen a problem. To them I was very advanced, apart from those inappropriate times in school when I couldn't wait for the other children to come up with the answer and felt I had to shout it out. But of course that just meant I was a bit rude, and a penalty would sort me out, except it didn't.
And because I'd been marked by everyone as "different", bullies naturally started in on me fairly sharpish. Even when we moved to the city when I was in my 3rd year of school (age 6), the stigma seemed to follow me.
I did manage to make 1 friend in the new school, Susan, but that was no protection, as she seemed to be as much at sea with the whole integration system as I was. Perhaps she was an Asperger too. Everything seemed fine when we'd invite each other home for Saturday, but we were both completely at sea in school, and she seemed afraid or unwilling to spend yard-time with me, so we'd each just wander around on our own then. I found that especially confusing.
I also had a younger sister, Brenda, who I am ashamed to say I used to bully horribly. I just got these horrible feelings of unclean-ness, because we shared a bedroom, and they seemed to get worse each year, until our parents finally did up the box-room as a bedroom for me, I think because they saw I was blighting Brenda's life, and causing her still to bed-wet at age 8. I felt they did not want to indulge me, but saw no other option.
I did WANT to make myself get along with Brenda. One time (couple years before the separate bedrooms) I even told my mother Brenda was invited to Susan's for Saturday too, as I wanted to be able to include her. But I didn't say anything to Susan, as I was afraid. So when she turned up along with me, and my mother explained to Susan's mother about Brenda's spare underpants, and left her along with me, well that may have been the first time Susan's family experienced the confusion that was my daily bread and butter!
Over the following few years, I did well in school as regards grades, but could not seem to behave appropriately from the other girls' point of view, and when my parents moved my brother (who was dyslexic) to a private mixed school to get him away from teachers who did not believe in his condition (he was supposed by them to be "just lazy", as he was obviously intelligent), I soon clamoured to get moved to his school too.
Well, talk about out of the frying-pan into the fire! The teens in the convent school I'd been at before had just struggled to understand where I was coming from: obviously very intelligent girl, seemingly unable to interpret normal social cues, but as I was placed in a high stream, most of them were pretty mature and hadn't given me a hard time, just found it a little difficult to figure out how to fit me into their activities. They were a terrific bunch, and I should have given them more of a chance.
Because the new school was small, so didn't even have streams for most things until a couple years after I joined, and as it was a mixed school they were also more socially experienced than the class I had come from, and also far less willing to forgive a little social ineptitude, where I had struggled before, now I completely floundered. Again scholastic aptitude made it all much more difficult for them to understand. Possibly hardest for me at this stage was how I wanted to debate things with my Mum - politics, theology, philosophy, whatever - but she would find that the manner I did this very repellent, and would even retreat in tears sometimes, which I found utterly confusing,but which makes so much sense now in the context of how Aspergers debate can seem to other people.
Anyway, while I have been to college, I have never managed to finish a degree, as I always found some reason to run away and retreat. I did find an amazing man 16 years ago, whom I love unreasonably, and also often treat unreasonably, I'm ashamed to say, but who somehow seems to put up with my weird idiosyncracies, and even with my habitually retreating from him. We married early last year, which I think was a horribly selfish act by me, and an incredibly unselfish one by him, as I mostly can't stand someone breathing in the same room as me when I try to sleep (try being the operative word: chronic insomniac!) So I generally sleep in the spare room, and if he's very lucky I'm in the mood to spend an hour "snuggling", as Marge Simpson would say, first.
I'm not looking to get formally diagnosed. I avoid doctors like the plague anyway, and developed an early horror of psychiatrists when my parents tried to get one to figure me out when I was 9 or 10, but he failed utterly, and I got the impression he was trying to get my parents to get me away from him by the end! I had completely dismissed Aspergers for me a long time ago, as I had only heard of how the cases tend to go in boys, but had never heard of a girl with it until very recently, and now that I have this sounds like my life to the T.
As I say, have no desire for an actual diagnosis, but would like to hear what you lot think, whether I'm on the right lines, and if so, maybe get to chew over this crazy world with y'all a bit.
Mep out.
