Well after many years of maintaining an active interest in the subject and gathering what information I could about it and after watching a rather good lecture about it, I have come to the conclusion that I probably have Asperger’s Syndrome, and have all my life.

Ta da! Diagnosis. Presumably the euphoria is on back order,

Seems kinda obvious now. But I was held back from this revelation by a notion I had from long long ago that Asperger’s (and ASD, and autism) were intimately linked with empathy and theory of mind, and I have both of those in spades.

But this morning I realized I hadn’t seen empathy and theory of mind mentioned in connection with The Spectrum in a very long time, possibly decades.

And with that out of the way, it all clicked into place. Obviously I am on the Spectrum, and Asperger’s seems to be about the right level of impairment.

Does that make me high functioning? Doesn’t sound like me.

And I don’t function much.

Being Asperger’s explains so much. Why I was always so intensely cerebral, even as a preschooler. Why I just plain wasn’t like the other kids and didn’t want to do the sort of things they wanted to do, like play with toys or run around.

Those things seemed pointless to me.

Of course I get it now.

And why I just couldn’t make friends. I was just too damned weird. I completely get the Aspie “aura of weirdness” that repels people with its icy alienation.

It’s brutally unfair, of course. The Aspie kid isn’t consciously doing anything to alienate people. In fact they’re often trying very hard not to do so.

But there is a continuity of empathic connection that exists between neurotypical people. A signal that goes back and forth between them that tells them they are dealing with another human being and information is going back and forth.

When that is disrupted, like in Asperger’s, you get a person who is innocently very “weird”. They creep people out.

And my “they” I also mean “me”, of course.

At last I have an explanation for my “broken antenna”, a metaphor I have used in the past to refer to how I don’t seem to pick up the signals others can perceive that allow for things like close human connection and social intelligence.

I can sense what people are thinking and feeling. And I can figure them out.

But it’s all very cold and inhuman.

Maybe I really am an alien. It would explain a lot. Occam’s Razor, though.

I have talked a lot about my brutally emotionally cold childhood. So much time spent all alone with nothing but my thoughts, the TV, or video games.

And that’s all true. But I also have to wonder if I was even open to being warmed up at all. I like to think that the right adult, if they stuck with me despite how difficult I could be and weathered my attempts to reject them, could have finally dragged me into the sunshine and given me what I needed to crack my little shell and let me emerge into the sunshine of human community.

But maybe not. Maybe I was just plain born broken and never was never any hope of my turning out normal or functional at all.

I still want to crack my icy shell and get to the Good Place, where all the warmth and love and acceptance and affirmation I’ve always needed can be found.

And I will never stop trying to do so, no matter what.

But I have to accept that I might not ling long enough to get there.

More after the break.

So now what?

Hey, check it out, it’s Temple Grandin!

So now that I am pretty certain I got the Asperger’s, what the heck do I do with this info?

I feel like I should know. But I don’t. I guess inasmuch as I thought about it at all, I assumed this would be some kind of transcendental revelation that made everything clear and therefore so much better.

And there was some relief. I felt an easing of inner tension and that lovely revelatory feeling of chaos coalescing into order and harmony.

But as to where I go from here, I dunno.

I already know a fair bit about the disorder, both from my own “research” (aka just reading and watching things I find interesting) and my observations of people I know with a diagnosis and their struggles.

So I am not the kind of Aspie that will rush out and inhale all the information I can get my grubby paws on about the Syndrome. If I take in too much information too fast, there is no chance it will be digested and thus retained.

I am sure as fuck not looking to join any goddamned social clubs. Yes, you’re an Aspie, I’m an Aspie, she’s an Aspie, wouldn’t you like to leave me the fuck alone?

I’ve got my precious friends Felicity, Joe, and Julian, and that’s quite enough for me. I’d like to have a boyfriend, assuming that is possible for a mental mutant like me, but that’s pretty much the only expansion to my social circle I am willing to make.

I think part of the reason I am not that euphoric is that part of me really doesn’t want to be an Aspie. To this part, it feels like I am giving up on myself and resigning myself to spending the rest of my life as a broken man.

Clearly I have got some stuff to work on now. Can I integrate this information into my identity? Or should I forget the whole thing and go back to not knowing?

After all, it’s a self-diagnosis. I could be radically wrong.

Well, genie’s out of the bottle now. Cant un-know things. So I suppose I just have to keep plodding through the dense fog like always.

Maybe it will help me make sense of things. I dunno.

But I need to lay down now.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.