The Curious Case of Us, Diagnosed-As-Adults Aspies
If Asperger syndrome is an inherited condition, it must’ve always been present in the population, just like any other inborn mental or physical condition. For mental conditions, there is always this additional hurdle of being less visible, less defined, and thus less understood by others.
People with high functioning form of autism usually possess normal intelligence, with difficulties mostly with socialization. Imagine how was it for the prior generations of these people. They must’ve lived their whole lives, wondering why they are not like others, unable to “put a finger” on what exactly is bothering them, experiencing ridicule or harsh treatment by those who didn’t know better, and never receiving any answers or reprieve. Come our time…
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It’s been close to a decade since Asperger syndrome was removed from official use as a stand alone diagnosis. While it was officially in use, the term signified a particular kind of autism, toward high functioning end of autistic spectrum. For us, diagnosed with it, it was too late to forget this specific label. We firmly identified with it, came up with quirky shortcuts, such as aspies, and stubbornly kept using it to self-describe ever since.
I mean, even if I were inclined to comply, am I supposed to present myself nowadays as “high functioning autistic”? Have those psych doctors ever considered that this simply does not sound as cool? Throughout this blog, I can’t help but keep referring to myself and others like me as aspies.
This mishap with the term for my self-identity happened shortly after I was finally diagnosed with the condition. Imagine how it added to that major self-realization process I started to go through. I was suddenly exposed to the body of knowledge about my condition, only to realize that this field is in itself nascent, with major breakthroughs or revisions considered normal occurrences. At least I was diagnosed! Better late then never…
I lived the better part of my life no differently then those prior generation aspies. Now, looking back, I reexamine the way I grew up, in Soviet Russia. My deficiencies in childhood, as I recall now, should’ve been quite noticeable. I was born in 1968, and by that time, the notion of autism should’ve been around. Not sure though that the mental health professionals in my country had any inklings about relatively mild, high functioning kind of cases, first recognized by Dr. Hans Asperger in the 1940s.
The condition that I will be later diagnosed with received it’s formal recognition in 1994, when it was included under “Asperger Syndrome” within DSM-IV, that year’s DSM book edition. That was a major development within western psychiatry (DSM is an official diagnostic and statistics manual of mental disorders for use within the United States). If it triggered interest and practical application in my country, I suppose it was mostly directed toward children. I was already a young adult by then, and missed that train too.
I muddled through my childhood, the high school, then the University in Vladivostok, while there, got married at 19, divorced 8 years later, meanwhile began working professionally after graduating in 1994, all without any mental health help whatsoever. Somehow I managed not to raise a “she needs special attention” alarm. Not sure was it due to my phenomenal ability to fit in, or my parents and other people in my life being not that attentive. It took my ill-conceived move to the United States in 1997 to bring me closer to the possibility of being diagnosed.
Not right away though. It’s not like I created any comfortable situation for myself in the US to allow for such luxuries as taking care of my well being. That Exchange Program, that brought me to the US, was supposed to be a step in advancing my career, my life. Instead, it turned out to be nothing but a closing chapter in the story of me blindly riding the youth factor. I failed to capitalize on it.
The program was supposed to be a 1 year long round trip. Instead, I chose not to return, and stayed in the US after completing the program. I made that decision on a whim, without a plan. No ideations of grander were involved. As I recall, the major factor in deciding to stay was simply fear of yet another move, another major change in life. That was the sign of my deficiencies taking over. I made such a big decision of abandoning my stable career in Russia, simply because I chose the immediate comfort zone of here and now. The initial shock of going to the US was bigger then I expected. So, after a year in the US, having somehow acclimated myself to the new reality, I wasn’t capable of changing it again so soon.
This tendency to quit any social engagement, even the beneficial one, in favor of the comfort of staying at home, has been a recurring theme in my life. I would choose this option most of the time, without regard to a potential strategic loss it brings. In fact, as far as I remember, I always had that draw, almost physical, to set myself up in some quiet seclusion, with necessities taken care of and with access to learning materials, and just stay there, indefinitely. That’s my ultimate dream, a powerful instinct. Creating funding to such a way of life was always an overarching agenda of mine. I wasn’t up to any career success.
So, upon remaining in the US, I kept choosing random occupations, preferring, may be subconsciously at first, those that take me closer to the ideal of staying at home forever, doing what I want. I do realize that many people would jokingly retort here that hey, all people don’t want to work. I can answer to that that in my case, the draw to stay home is visceral, there are physical symptoms that increase if I have to go out there to work for too long.
After about 2 years of keeping a job, and not necessarily an unbearable kind, I start experiencing persistent ideations of quitting that job. It becomes more and more difficult for me to get up, get ready for a day, and go out to get to work in time. I start to be habitually late. I experience as if physical drag, with a sense of heaviness in the legs. Remember the scene from Gone With the Wind, when Melanie Wilkes goes into her difficult labor in Atlanta? Think of how the servant girl Prissy, who at first boasted that she has experience with labor, then was found to be walking very slowly, as if unwilling to ever come back to where she was supposed to assist Melanie. That’s the feeling.
When I reach that point, I more often then not just quit. When quitting like that, I do try to come up with alternative self-support method. Well, I did survive up to now, didn’t I? Suffice it to say, it was not always a very secure and well thought of alternative. This character flaw I am sure was always there. For me, staying in the US turned out to be a trigger for this affliction to start playing a major role in my life.
Add to it the built-in issues with self-confidence. For this issue, as I recently found out, there are others, experiencing it, and there is a name for it: the impostor syndrome. Ah, yes yes, now I know how to label that, which was plaguing me all my life. This added to my failure to thrive in the US. Overall, I conclude, that instead of being the cause of enhancing my life, the move to the US triggered the worst of my character flaws, that were otherwise dormant or manageable.
There were still ups and downs while leading this kind of life in the US. I socialized somewhat, not all was doom and gloom. In 2003 I got married, and had my son in April of 2005. I was trying my best at the time to become a good wife and mom. I don’t know for sure what to blame for the divorce that happened shortly after, in 2006. Was it the resurfacing of my character flaws, or my ex being unsupportive? I did really try… I agreed to give custody of our son to father, and concentrated on being at least a good, support paying non-custodial mom.
It was during the first years after the divorce, that I turned to introspection, started to “suspect something”, and found a way to get diagnosed. How? By chance. I qualified for a paid medical research in the Summer of 2007, and was diagnosed with Aspergers. That was an amazing realization, confirming my vague suspicions. Lots of things now made sense. That’s when I learned to apply the quirky label “aspie” to myself, by the way.
Good so far. With such a build-up toward me being finally diagnosed, the reader might expect at this point a story of how I must’ve finally got help? Or may be, with my track record, it’s totally possible to expect that I failed to capitalize even upon getting diagnosed?
The latter possibility was what happened, of course. I do regard getting diagnosed as a turning point in my inner life. That was the moment when I ceased to be an unsuspecting “prior generation”-like aspie, and turned to serious self-exploration and improvement. Then how did I manage still not to connect with some sort of supportive community, which are legion in the US? How did I end up keeping going on my own, being thankful only to the very fact of being diagnosed?
See, questions like this are what prompted me to come up with this blog. I arrived to realization, that I may be a peculiar “case”. May be, whatever I recall or figure out about myself is of interest to some audience out there, in the world?
I am a diagnosed-as-adult aspie. There are others like me, and we are a unique and transient sort. We experienced the unaided, “wild” upbringing, with the host of undesirable traits, mostly related to socialization, allowed to “bloom” in us unopposed. Thankfully, we should be the last generation to experience such ignorance, because during our lifetimes the society undergone it’s own quantum leap in self-knowledge. All future generations of people, born with our kind of autism, hopefully should be helped from childhood, so that they avoid the full extent of possible adverse effects. At some point of our adult lives we arrived to our individual moments of truth upon being diagnosed.
This places us in a unique situation. If we have any ability to self-reflect and analyze our lives, we can now report on our condition from inner observer point of view. Right. A t-shirt wisdom comes to mind: “If you can not be a good example, be a warning”? Yes, that’s what I am saying, I guess. And this is going to be the main idea for this blog. Hope my perspective turns out to be of interest, as I am sure, many others already came up with similar projects. I will be on a lookout for like minded authors, and will be happy to compare my ideas with theirs.
