My Experience (a long and complicated story)

As for my history with Asperger’s Syndrome, I can reflect back on my life and note certain characteristics of ASD behavior, as well as how ASD has gone unrecognized for so long. When I was 3-years-old, I was obsessed with trains. I would be in awe about the trains in the Sears Catalog and at Toys R Us. I can recall my grandmother taking me to the Kohls Childrens Museum, where I would spend hours in the Brio Train Set section, detached and in my own world of trains and complex model cities surrounding the toy train sets. I can recall being a very selfish child by not letting the other children play with the trains; I wanted the entire train set for myself to play with. When I was 5-years-old, I became obsessed with dinosaurs. My grandparents can recall times when I would tell them all about the dinosaurs, what types of dinosaurs they were, and whether or not they were carnivores or herbivores. According to Wikipedia, these behaviors are likely to go unrecognized as signs of an ASD on account of that fact that many children are interested in dinosaurs.

Throughout my life, I've always had a main obsession, which I would focus on for hours each day. When I was 7- and 8-years-old, my obsession was with Outer Space and the Solar System. My favorite store was the Rand McNalley store in the mall. Browsing through this store satisfied my appetite for space and geography. When I was 9-10-years old it was making Newspapers. When I was 11-13 years old it was professional wrestling (WWF,WCW, etc). I would spend hours playing the video-game WWF Wrestlemania 2000, creating my own characters and running my own fantasy wrestling federation with my original characters in the game. I would also spend hours on the internet as I was deeply involved with E-Federations and role-playing for my own character. During the beginning of my freshman year, I had an obsession with creating scripts for movies and screenwriting. When I became a freshman in high school, I was influenced by the desire to have a girlfriend. I was very much socially inept and I had a hard time identifying with people of my age group. Most of the people I had contact with in school didn’t like me because of my aloofness. I would repeatedly mock or play pranks on the people who sat at my lunch table. I was very eccentric and often described by my peers as ‘crazy’. My appearance and personal hygiene were definitely not acceptable for any type of girl. I always wore sweat-pants and plaid/flannel shirts or sweat-shirts. After watching the Godfather one night with my grandfather, I experienced an epiphany of sorts as I was very intrigued by the respect, integrity, and humility of Don Vito Corleone and the Italian culture the Godfather portrayed. Being of Italian heritage myself, I decided that it was a good idea to dress more formal (Italian-style formal), and to express myself in an old-fashioned Italian manner. I had cleaned up my act and no longer mocked or played pranks on my peers. I developed a sharp Italian-American accent and had done all sorts of research on Italy and the Italian culture. I become known around my peers for being the "Italian Stallion," and if you were to look at a picture of me from back then you certainly wouldn't doubt it. This obsession lasted from mid-freshman year until the beginning of junior year in high school.

During the ages of 11-14, I developed a very emotionally close relationship with my great-great-aunt, whom I called ‘Auntie’. She lived in my old neighborhood in Chicago, so I would commute to the city nearly every weekend to stay at her house. Auntie and I had enjoyed each other’s company. I used to enjoy drinking my coffee mixed with hot chocolate and sitting in the kitchen with Auntie while she told me stories about her life growing up with her family in the city. I miss the days in the summer when Auntie and I would be in the kitchen playing checkers or a card game, with the windows open allowing a gentle breeze to blow through the house, making the wind chimes jingle. During these years were when I had my wrestling obsession, so consequently, my weekends at Auntie’s house were filled with wrestling video-games and TV shows. Auntie, who was about 80 years old, would watch the wrestling shows with me and talk to me about how “full of himself” the Rock was, or how much of a “conceited ass” Kurt Angle was. Auntie liked wrestling so much that my grandpa told me he caught her watching it one day even when I wasn’t there. Auntie was a tough-minded lady. She never “took no shit from nobody” during her life. She told me a story about when my dad was younger, and he was being picked on by some neighborhood punks, that she gave my dad a baseball bat and told him to hit the punk who is picking on him, and if he didn’t do it, that she would hit my dad for not standing up for himself. On January 8th, 2003, Auntie had passed away due to stomach cancer which didn’t give her much of a chance to fight back. My emotional response to this event I found kind of strange. During the wake and funeral I had a hard time expressing my emotions. Three days after the funeral I felt physically ill and had to stay home from school for a week. The death of my aunt was the onset, and is the source of most of my emotional problems.

Throughout my entire education, from 1st grade to present, I’ve had difficulties in school. In grade school I seldom turned in a homework assignment. I would always be in detention for this because if you miss 3 homework assignments you will receive a detention slip. My refusal to complete homework assignments was not a symptom of aggression against my teacher or the school system. I would have very much enjoyed doing homework had it been intellectually stimulating enough. The reason was because I had better things to do at home than homework. I had obsessions to spend time on. Now that I am in college, I realize that no matter how intellectually dull the homework or class is, I still have to complete it in order to receive credit, and that it is just the way life is, and not everything is going to be the way I want it to be.

During the beginning of my junior year in high school, I had started a part-time job as a Bus Boy/Dishwasher at a restaurant in my town. A series of rather unfortunate circumstances proceeded that event, such as the onset of my paranoia and depression. This is about the time when my ASD became evident to me, though I still wasn’t aware that it was an ASD, I just assumed I was very different. My behavior was largely of a quiet, nearly mute-like, nature. I had great difficulties physically speaking to anybody because of my severe anxiety. I started to think people were making fun of me or talking negatively about me behind my back. At work, I suspected my coworkers of spitting in my food and drink. I felt the same way at school as well. I would misinterpret social cues, believing positive comments directed toward me were actually negative insults that were disguised as positive comments, or that the people who said them really meant the opposite and were being sarcastic. Consequently, I withdrew from my social life and kept mostly to myself at school and work. I never acted on any of my suspicions because I had doubts about their validity, as I did not have any verifiable evidence that they were true, so I just kept my thoughts to myself. I spent large amounts of time isolated in my bedroom and had a moderate case of agoraphobia. I still managed to get up every morning, regardless of how much sleep I got, and go to school and work, albeit depressed, extremely anxious and mute.

In the eyes of a neurotypical, my work habits were a bit on the unusual side. While at work, I would follow a certain method to clean tables. I would pull my cart up to the table, remove beverage glasses and place them in two rows on the cart, afterwards I would remove teacups and stack them 3 at a time in one row next to the glasses. Then I would go for the silverware and place it in the bin on the cart. Next, I would remove dishes, stacking them on the cart in order of their size. And finally, I would remove all trash, which included napkins, paper place-mats, straws, and whatever else customers left there. This was viewed as unusual because everyone else who worked there didn’t have a specific method to cleaning tables. As a dishwasher, that sort of work was very routinized because it was a very linear and cyclic process: bus boy carts come in, dishes are cleared off, dishes are placed into the washing machine, dishes come out and are put away, and that process repeats. Every two hours or so we would have to take out the garbage. There were two people to do the job, but honestly I could work better and faster if I were working alone. There were days, busy days mind you, where I would be dishwashing alone, and those were my favorite days because nobody would be in my way and that decreased the amount of people I had to interact with. The worst part about that job was cleaning up after closing time. I avoided mopping the chef’s row because that particular part of the job was very chaotic and brought great stress upon me. It took me a lot longer to complete that task than anybody else who worked there.

Despite my condition, I was able to be a productive and efficient worker. I was once described as being a "machine" or "robot" because I would never talk to anyone or show any kind of emotion (other than social anxiety), but only work incessantly. My grades at school were very poor. I had a hard time dealing with school and work at the same time. It seemed that I was in complete work-mode. While in work-mode I couldn’t get my mind to focus on school and everything else I needed to get done. I knew that it was a problem for me but I didn’t know how to deal with it because that sort of thing had never happened to me before. I didn't want to quit working because then I wouldn't have money for college, and because my family was very proud of me for having a job. I still managed to pass my classes and graduate from high school.

During my high school days, I started believing that I was under surveillance by the government, so that they can know what I'm doing at all times in order to prevent me from doing something crazy or insane. Everywhere I went, including family parties, school, work, my entire house, public places, etc., I believed I was under surveillance. This is around the time when I began hearing voices in my head. The voices were U.S. government agents who were commentating on my behavior and my thoughts. I believed they had implanted a chip in my brain while I was asleep that allowed them to know what I'm thinking so that they could know immediately if I was going to plan something or do something crazy. I also believed that expert psychologists were among the people who were "watching me and reading my thoughts." If I was going to my garage to have a cigarette, I would hear them say, "He's going to have a cigarette now," and things of that nature. I also started hearing my friend's voices as well. For instance, I told one of my friends that I had gotten him a gift card for christmas, and while he told me thank you and seemed to be very thankful for it, as I was in my car on my way home from his house, I heard a voice (my friend's voice) that said, "you can take and shove this gift card up your ass!"

In August of 2006, two months after I graduated from high school, I was given a prescription of Risperidone. I began taking the drug and started feeling a little bit more confident in myself, but not as much as I should have been. I started freshman year of college the following month at the community college in my town. After believing that certain class-mates were plotting something against me, I dropped out of college that semester. Several months had passed before I was able to return to school. I was on a higher dose of my medication and it seemed to be helping me a lot. In September of 2007 I was diagnosed with Schizo-affective Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I've been in psychotherapy for almost a year and a half now and I've been improving a little every day. I received Social Security Disability in July of 2008. I've been keeping my mind occupied with music, reading, writing, chatting online, and playing video-games. I still hear voices sometimes when I'm alone. I still experience disturbing thoughts and minor delusions as well, but they are not as severe as they used to be. In March of 2009 I began taking Paliperidone instead of Risperidone, which I like much better because Risperidone made me really tired and increased my appetite. I had to take a break from school for the spring 2009 semester due to not having enough money to fund my education. I have just recently applied for a scholarship for people with disabilities which should take effect in the fall of 2009. If I am accepted to receive the scholarship, I can continue my education.

Hi,

I enjoyed reading that. Please don't take that the wrong way. Why I enjoyed it is because I have Asperger's Syndrome and it's good to read a story of someone's life, especially when it so closely resembles my own. Almost everything you have written I can relate to. I was just on your website too and all of your interests are interests that I share too. My core interests are Biology and Cosmology though. Did you enjoy The Fabric of the Cosmos? I only read it for the first time around 7 months ago.

During school, I also interpreted comments as an attack (even when they were positive); and this landed me in trouble, socially-speaking. Like you, I am also an efficient and dedicated worker. I have also been diagnosed with OCD. What else? - Yeh - Civilisation - i love that game. i used to play it or hours on end. There were some days where I would get up in the morning to play it, and then I wouldn't get out of my seat until later that night. However, my favourite game was one called Champiomship Manager - It's a game where you are the manager of a soccer team (sorry, soccer is huge over here in Ireland and the UK!). It allowed me to dream up my own fantasies, as opposed to other games where the storyline is kind of set and there's no way to formulate your own story.

Kevin