stranger

you suddenly notice the reasons why you did everything you have done, and why you weren't aware of any of it, exactly.

you previously thought you knew yourself, but you were mistaken.

you have become a stranger. you are foreign. someone who is completely inexplicable and yet somehow totally predictable.

despite being well practiced, all your actions feel strange and forced. still going through the same exact motions, but all the old meaning is gone.

habits made obsolete, but... you don’t quite know how to construct better ones.

have you ever wondered what it feels like to wake up?

Different to the core

Throughout my life, I've always felt that other people were incredibly irrational and unethical. I felt like a completely different species, in a way. This is an interesting dynamic, since in a way spectrum individuals are that different from the average person, and the result is that there is a mutual bewilderment about each other. We have an impossible time trying to imagine that someone can be so enormously different than ourselves.

This may well be the best card to have up your sleeve in those types of conversations with people in your life that you want to involve in knowing the real you. That though it may be difficult to understand, we are very different to the core, and that this isn't a bad thing. Then follow it up with 'the discovery criteria for aspie' as a way to illustrate all the great positive elements.

I was realizing today with these thoughts, that though I've sensed being different throughout life, I based it on will. That's where I was missing some of the big picture. I felt I was choosing to be different from others, with their self-oblivious non-identities. I felt I was living the examined life.. In a way, I was, but I've so far transcended the micro-focus on components of myself with this new perspective and access to network of people so much more similar to me than I ever felt another person could be.

"[It's] not wrong to like being by yourself... I think the main treatment is self-understanding and self-acceptance... You don't suffer from asperger's, you suffer from other people." - Dr. Tony Attwood, Autism Spectrum expert

I think I've fully assembled the pieces of myself and reached the starting point on the path to self-understanding and self-acceptance. I realized that the reason I've coped quite well so far is because of my literal obtuseness. I rejected the idea of attempting to fit in or be accepted by conventional society from VERY early. In kindergarten I refused to do the projects assigned and demanded to make my own versions my own way. I always felt boxed in and minimized. This compounded in high school years when I felt like I was just being put on an assembly line on the path to being a work-drone for the bureaucracy...

My resilience was my protective layer of shutting out the criticism of others. Although I recognize now the disadvantages of shunning social thinking through these stages of development, it was also my only resilience. I really was suffering merely from other people, as Attwood put it. I simply didn't allow the fact that I was different to weaken any of my resolve to follow what I wanted to do and be. I felt I was walking my own path due to my own strength of will. My rebellion was to do what felt valuable for myself, in spite of all the discouragement and hassle that came to me from everyone in my life. But up till now, I never properly gave myself genuine permission to be different and to understand and harness the vastness of the talents of my mind.

Discovering Aspie personality

This is a positive set of criteria attempting to describe traits of individuals on the autism spectrum that are advantageous. This is a better way to look at adults who might be on the spectrum because the strengths are likely to be the most easily observable qualities in persons who are coping well with the challenges and shortcomings of their neurology. It was written by Dr. Tony Attwood, an expert on the autism spectrum, and associate Gray. Here I am quoting only the criteria. There is significant discussion about why this criteria was formulated and ways that it can be applied by those who have spectrum individuals in their lives. The full paper can be viewed at http://www.tonyattwood.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79:the-discovery-of-aspie-criteria&catid=45:archived-resource-papers&Itemid=181

A. A qualitative advantage in social interaction, as manifested by a majority of the following:

1. peer relationships characterized by absolute loyalty and impeccable dependability

2. free of sexist, "age-ist", or culturalist biases; ability to regard others at "face value"

3. speaking one’s mind irrespective of social context or adherence to personal beliefs

4. ability to pursue personal theory or perspective despite conflicting evidence

5. seeking an audience or friends capable of: enthusiasm for unique interests and topics;

6. consideration of details; spending time discussing a topic that may not be of primary interest

7. listening without continual judgement or assumption

8. interested primarily in significant contributions to conversation; preferring to avoid ‘ritualistic small talk’ or socially trivial statements and superficial conversation.

9. seeking sincere, positive, genuine friends with an unassuming sense of humour

B. Fluent in "Aspergerese", a social language characterized by at least three of the following:

1. a determination to seek the truth

2. conversation free of hidden meaning or agenda

3. advanced vocabulary and interest in words

4. fascination with word-based humour, such as puns

5. advanced use of pictorial metaphor

C. Cognitive skills characterized by at least four of the following:

1. strong preference for detail over gestalt

2. original, often unique perspective in problem solving

3. exceptional memory and/or recall of details often forgotten or disregarded by others, for example: names, dates, schedules, routines

4. avid perseverance in gathering and cataloguing information on a topic of interest

5. persistence of thought

6. encyclopaedic or ‘CD ROM’ knowledge of one or more topics

7. knowledge of routines and a focused desire to maintain order and accuracy

8. clarity of values/decision making unaltered by political or financial factors

D. Additional possible features:

1. acute sensitivity to specific sensory experiences and stimuli, for example: hearing, touch, vision, and/or smell

2. strength in individual sports and games, particularly those involving

3. endurance or visual accuracy, including rowing, swimming, bowling, chess

4. “social unsung hero” with trusting optimism: frequent victim of social

5. weaknesses of others, while steadfast in the belief of the possibility of genuine friendship

6. increased probability over general population of attending university after high school

7. often take care of others outside the range of typical development

Unreachable?

My childhood and adolescent phases is one thing I haven't written about in any sort of focused manner yet. My memories are scattered for various reasons I will attempt to explain as we go.

I have to start at the beginning. I was raised in a series of odd situations in what you might as well describe as a religious home. My childhood has always been difficult for me to understand. I feel that no one gave me proper attention to notice any of my traits. My dad (who I now strongly suspect is on the spectrum) tells me that as a young child, I did not want to be touched, hugged, or held, and I was very active. He says that he has spent a lifetime trying to reach me.


I was diagnosed ADHD around 5 or 6 and put on ritalin. One of my only memories of my mother is the day of my 9th birthday, when I was given a remote control car I'd been asking for. I was intensely interested in these, though I didn't own any I would say that I was extremely fixated on them. That must have been just a month before she died (november, 1993). This memory is almost toxic to me. I hated myself, that unreachable child, for what I later began to view as materialistic fixation. I have this image of my mother in the hospital bed, with the wrapped gift sitting on her lap. I absolutely LOATHED that me, in the shadow of her death. This may have been what lead me to such strong interest in death itself. I felt filthy and completely inhuman once I began to really think back and try to understand my childhood. This attitude was the first start of the self dissection that has lead to my current endeavor of researching the autism spectrum as potentially applicable to these various past selves.

One other notable memory of her is the time I figured out there was no santa clause, and how my mom cried and how upset I was at being misled.

One school memory I do have from earlier childhood was when we had first begun reading in school. I would read the same book over and over (cave boy) literally to meet and exceed the reading quotas for school and for the award program where you earned star stickers that added up to a pizza award.

My dad decided to get remarried almost immediately and two older step brothers appeared in my life, who I basically watched destroy their own lives with drug & alcohol use/violence/all manner of delinquentism. The moral of the story of this section-- I was largley ignored amidst the hell they seemed to be creating, and it went completely unnoticed that I had been encouraged to participate in inhalant usage, which is gasoline huffing, which I did with the oldest brother. the memory of this experience is fucking terrifying. Also endured a few episodes of sexual and physical abuse because of them. I realize that I was bullied by both siblings, as well as the step parent, constantly. I never had any idea how to tell someone what had happened. I believe I was 10-12 during this phase.

So from the outside looking in, you would have thought my experience amounted the the best anti-drug/delinquentism training I could have experienced. In reality, I just felt extremely fucked up by the ordeal, and came out with the feeling that my entire world rejected me and that I had not one remaining parent who cared at all about me.

Thinking back, I'm sure that if I hadn't been abused the outcome would have probably been different. I wouldn't have rebelled as heavily during school and had more energy to apply my abilities. I kind of checked-out schoolwise.

I also probably would have been less defiant toward the therapists they sent me to. I'd been in various types of therapy and to different psychologists throughout childhood as a result of the ADHD diagnosis and supposedly also to provide me a resource of coping with the loss of the parent. I can't really recall anything productive coming from any of the therapy. The last one I worked with was the first one to do cognitive therapy and I felt that it was useful and stimulated my mind. I'm still baffled that throughout all this therapy no one ever thought to consider my social and emotional incapabilities. They just thought I was bipolar or traumatized. I had been labeled with different forms of mood disorders, from depression, to OCD, attachment disorder, and the like.

What I do recall about the me that survived all this is not very much. I recall being isolated. I think I was simply severely unaware of how eccentric I appeared to everyone. I'm now aware that I dressed in clothes far too big for me, and my hair was never orderly. I stayed away from other kids whenever possible. I really did not like being at school, or being told how to do things, so I did my own version of any task that I could. I have memories of this attitude as early as preschool and kindergarten while my mother was still alive.

I think art was my least favorite activity since I always thought what I made was far below the neatness that the other children produced. I'm not sure why this bothered me. I suppose it was because I felt adults were lying to me when telling me that what I made was good.

I remember always wanting to earn the Physical Education achievements. I think they were called the presidential award or something. And I remember that I could never meet the requirements.

I am told I got bad grades in almost everything. Homework was somewhere between "extremely difficult" and "impossible" for me, for reasons of attention and pure amotivation. I recall always avoiding it or doing it with the absolute minimum seriousness possible, and in spite of thatm always doing from quite well to nearly perfect on tests in things I enjoyed. This remained the case at every stage of school.

I always had around 1 friend at a time, probably another loner or outcast of some sort. Thinking back I find it odd how at all times there was 1 friend or less. For whatever reason any friend I had left my life or simply stopped being my friend, and I don't think I took a big notice of it when that particular thing happened.

I was also very suggestible. At one point I had a friend who I realize now was more just a bully, who told me a great activity was carving letters in your flesh with razor blades. I participated in this. The letters were of initials of various girls this fellow and I decided we had crushes on. this was probably age 10 or 11, 4th or 5th grade. I know it had to have been after the night I cut my wrist with a boyscout pocket knife-- which also didn't seem to alarm the parental unit to the degree one would expect in reaction to a 9 or 10 year old attempting suicide but just too naively to be successful.

I remember being in trouble for the results of things others encouraged me to do. At one point I wrote "up yours" as an answer to a test question I didn't know and was sent to disciplinary office. I also was frequently scolded for eating food from the floor or parts of other kids' food they had spit on and given to me.

Later on in the approach to adolescence, I recall requesting to stay inside to play with rubiks cube and other logic puzzles, cryptogram books, and optical illusion/math/brain teaser books. That was my big obsession. I was learning, and solving rubiks cube around age 11 or 12, and I was very good at it. I usually solved it within a matter of minutes. I was actually older than most of my schoolmates due to a late year birthday, I went in the year behind me age-wise.

I also remember a time when I was taken away to do a "special" test, this was probably that same time period- and I must have been mad because I was having to miss a subject I liked, so I purposefully went through it as fast as I could, and doing the answers flippantly, as revenge for this wrong. If they had just told me why it was being done, I am sure I would have taken it seriously. Only afterwards was I told that it was being done for placement in a few additional advanced versions of some of the classes. This infuriated me even more and I think I demanded to be given another try.


In the beginning of adolescence, I was very much without friends. I never even tried in the odd middle school years. My activity of choice was making up algebraic equations and working out the solutions. I also developed a fascination enabled by internet access, as I was alone at home every afternoon after school during this time period (in the interim of the end of the first step mother's reign, she had just left one summer while we were out of state on a vacation).

On into adolescence I still remained separate. I took a direction of declaring myself different by various methods. An activity I had carried over from childhood school was using a paper clip (you could bend one till it broke in two and use the jagged point resulting) to make holes in pencils. In adolescence I got the idea to connect these pencils together in craft fashion into necklaces I would wear. I also developed an extreme idiosyncratic impulsivity. I was enormously disruptive and obnoxious in many classes, especially the early morning church classes that I was forced to attend. To cope with this in regular school I immersed myself in the process of writing instead of vocalizing the amusements I observed in everyday speech.

I also enjoyed wearing one black shoe, and one white shoe. I liked doing things to tell the social systems I wasn't interested in them in any fashion. I spent my time playing footbag by myself. Sometimes various groups of other loner-like kids would want to play it with me or learn some moves from me. I spent a lot of time reading about the subject online, and I had several very high quality footbags.

I also was a member of the musical programs at high school. I enjoyed being musical and I think this is the closest to social involvement that I got in pre-adult life. I was in the different vocal groups, both in classes and extra-curricularly. Same for instrumental, I played in both symphonic band and as part of the smaller brass sections that played with the orchestra in competitions.

My high point in high school was perhaps when I won a cryptography recognition when I solved an encryption using a javascript code I had written to run the algorithms. I had done a lot of coding in the first two years in my spare time for a computer game mod.

My dad had gotten remarried again pretty fast after the last wife left him, and I really did not like it. The new step parent made everything worse for my high school years along with putting up with the religious pressure and ridiculous public school system. I had been trying very hard up to that point to still conform to all expectations of me, but it simply exploded into chaos.

After 2 years in high school I started to fall apart in terms of motivation as I began to find myself in more challenging uninteresting subjects, and from mounting pressure of the social environment and authority structures. I began to feel extremely troubled and just did not want to be part of it anymore. That's probably why I dropped out to become homeschooled. I think that my therapists saw it as a bipolar event, but really I just couldn't take anymore bullshit. Eventually I completed a correspondence diploma finishing in sync with my actual graduating class after the 2 years of not being in school. During that time I'd discovered and experimented with lucid dreaming, becoming exremely absorbed in studying it and practicing all the techniques. The whole time was extremely stifling to me as I was never encouraged about any of my interests, and frequently told I needed to spend my energy on schoolwork so I could someday make a decent living.

I had also gotten in to involvement with some kids who were viewed as anarchistic by the general authority structure, hanging out with them because I felt accepted and encouraged. I think I mainly did it because of that, and because it let me avoid the home environment that I hated by that point. What amounted to a very simple and completely benign experimention with cannabis was escalated to the point of my being forced to participate in a narc-out program where I was forced to help detectives take down one of my best friends in their pursuit of choking the drug dealers out in our small suburb. I was forced (by my father) to participate in it. I was threatened with prosecution for possession which I think only worked due to heavy intimidation tactics. I wish I would have known how to just tell him, and them, to do whatever they wanted to me, that I would not do it. I have a lifelong regret for letting them do that to my friend instead of me.

Under pressure to apply to college, I took my ACT and got a 31 (out of 36- considered a very high score), and applied to several schools. Among those I was accepted, I got informed by my dad that he would only pay out of the college savings he had for me to attend the one of his choice, which of course was the official university of his jesus cult. At that point in my life as a matter of fact I'd finally started to question the doctrines and cultural details that had been more or less brainwashed into me from birth, and it could not have been more infuriating for him to treat me like that after everything, with my serious considerations of completely abandoning this religion I'd begun to question. But, I put up with it long enough as my ticket out of there and into my only opportunity to rebuild my life and my identity, though I was not yet "aware" of this angle of looking at it.


I almost cannot blame anyone for not noticing the social/emotional ineptitude components. They were heavily masked at these stages of development. I was idiosyncratic, impulsive, and avoided failure in social encounters by engineering my own unique failures on purpose.

Thinking back though, I can't pinpoint one attempt from anyone to really actually care about me in a respectful fashion. I was pushed through life from the "tough love" standpoint by those who were supposed to care about me. I was never encouraged about my interests, instead belittled and told the things I loved would never make a living and that I needed to spend all my energy on schoolwork and serving god.

I was just too untouchable for any attempt at outreach from a peer, I suppose. Everything began to change when I met the first person who had ever properly accepted me. Though it was awkward on the first few meetings, it seemed we were a perfect fit for each other. She offered me much needed guidance, acceptance, encouragement, and genuine human respect and companionship. These are things that I feel are a parent's duty to provide for their child, unconditionally. It was never provided to child/adolescent me whatsoever, and I certainly lacked any sort of intuition to attempt social/emotional interaction as it is expected by normal people. I had to learn it all from scratch, and that learning began at the beginning of 2004 when I met the woman I'd marry.

I'm still often wondering exactly what it is I'm offering in return for this relational generosity. I constantly fuck up and fail to communicate properly. I can't yet offer emotional repair or even start to know when and how to try. Whatever happens though I still love my wife, and I know she will never abandon me.

what is friendship?

It's come to my attention that "most people" have purely social relationships. I'm not officially sure what a purely social relationship is supposed to be.

What's the purpose of a relationship if it doesn't stand for some common belief or goal? My friendship with my spouse is built on the common goals of independent living, education, and unity, and is strengthened by shared interests in computer gaming, science, music, and non-theism. We also share social inhibitions and prefer to be alone. She gets intense anxiety but can share in emotion and pick up those cues.

I'm supposed to be friendly with my family, keep in touch with them, etc. this is difficult for me since my goals are opposite of theirs, since I choose not to base my entire life on ritualistic beliefs and requirements.

I don't even maintain non-family friends, in the traditional way at least. My friends are the people I interact with online to share knowledge, ideas, and creative endeavors. At work once I had a professional friend who exchanged feedback and ideas with me. They really helped me improve myself and also looked for my opinion when they had challenges.

People at work think they are my friend since they come to me with questions about things I'm the expert on that we deal with at work. When they start to share what I view to be stupid and ignorant beliefs I just ignore it or play along. They aren't my friend. The point is, it appears to me that they think I am their friend and support their dumb ideas.

A few of my friends I spent time doing things with around adolescence have just become unreachable in the ways I prefer (IM/email/social network). I haven't reproduced the circumstances that created that type of friendship in my adult life really at all as compared to the amounts of free time one has as an adolescent that does not need to work for a living.

I refuse to declare myself incapable of emotional interaction just because of impaired feelings-sense

One of the most profound impacts of my exploration of the traits of high functioning autism has been my realization of my pattern of impaired feelings gauge, my limited everyday emotional experiences, and the fact that my extremely abstract self-nullifying concept of identity is likely due to impairment in Theory of Mind (as discussed by Tony Attwood).

I feel so much different now recognizing my gravitational emotion range. I feel emotion, but certain ones occur only in response to music / film. I don't sense these emotions happening in others and rarely experience them introspectively. Music gives me positive feelings, film paired with music makes sadness happen, and stress or fear causes anger responses that come out of nowhere- that's the only day to day emotional occurrence I have in response to interaction. I try to balance myself with music, and it's clear that I always have done this without consciously observing the balancing act. I always enjoy the effect that film has on me. I've noticed that even happy things in them will create the physiological sadness reactions.

I've very much struggled with the combination of the abstract, null identity, dead inside sense of self and the lack of range of feelings in response to human interaction. Right now I think I have a better adjustment to it than ever now that I'm aware of the pattern.

This is why I've become determined to figure out how to do social/emotional training so that I can become capable of the types of emotional interaction that have always vexed me in adult life.

I simply feel unworthy of any of the love or acceptance I may have been shown because I realize how unfair this is when I am a relative nonparticipant emotionally. I see how horribly I've failed to give affection, and how much I have aggravated conflicts because the stress and anger responses happen, then leading to a habit of making allusions to the null-self mindset.... failing to understand how to step away from a conflict or feed in to the emotions happening to respond to them rather than the literal topic of conflict. I've failed completely to be an adult. And I am disappointed with myself, and I wish to improve and reconcile these wrongs.

How can I be a proper spouse much less parent without committing to this improvement?

Resilience is not 100% failsafe

Last year I wrote the following in my regular blog, but kept it private (entry under same title). It serves as a great introduction for this post.

8/18/09:

About 1 year ago I had gone through a bit of what I'd call a relapse of a severe attraction to suicide. I'd glorified it in my mind in the past, but I never committed myself to a plan the way I did last June. I even got through the rationalization that I would not be hurting or disappointing anyone. With my mother dead and my father a complete stranger who has essentially disowned me, no friends or social links outside of working relationships, and a twisted idea that my wife did not and really could not care properly about me, I was completely prepared to exit, wake up, face the mighty unknown.

I'd classify what I went through as a delusion. There was no catalytic event per se. My life was going fairly well, but I had no concept of how much it was about to improve over the next year. On the other hand, it was a very harsh lesson in how much I've largely ignored the damage ive sustained from past loss and unresolved conflicts. I chose an identity completely disconnected from anything of my upbringing. My speculation is that that state of things was the most likely catalyst for what happened to me. I've been trying to work backwards since then and examine the old me to resolve in my mind some of what I'd been ignoring.

I've come to understand it as a possible episode of something called depersonalization disorder. All of a sudden, I found myself totally "disconnected" from my physical existence. The actual episode of disconnection was short in duration, however it spawned the delusion in my mind that I needed to "wake up" from life.

Those thoughts and feelings are just one dark fragment of who I am. They are not representative of my identity in total, not influencing to the choices I make. The only influence that has developed is a kind of resilience; the will to persevere over seemingly titanic challenges has cultivated to a great strength through survival of past troubles.

Each person goes through uniquely variant challenges in life- I have a hard time with the concept of empathy- "I know what you're going through" is a meaningless phrase to me. My wife is the opposite end of the spectrum, endlessly feeling, intensely capable of perceiving & interpretting human emotion. This year, in the creation of my art, is the first time i have felt properly able to express myself and release some of the negative energy, repair some damage, and feel stronger as a human being.

Viewed from the big picture perspective I've recently gained, this event appears to have been a "depression attack", resulting in a fixation on death and particularly my own death. I recall spending every waking minute in Special Interest fashion focusing on planning the method, making list of the materials or possible options, and reading forums and blogs about methodology. Here are two entries I wrote in a separate blog I also kept completely private.

Waking Up - 6/6/2008

it finally makes sense.

I am supposed to wake up.

I am an alien in this world. every day I go to work, and I act and pretend. I then go home, and act some more. at first I thought this was because no one really cares about who I am, not even those who claim to love me. but then I realized the answer is simple. I have no identity. I don't need them, and I don't need anything.

I am trapped inside this dream world. for the longest time I thought achieving lucidity was the end goal. however, I feel I have reached that point, because of this: I realize now what I have to do. its like I've always wondered how to wake up. but never realized that I WANT to do so. I can clearly see now that this is the solution. or more precisely the next step, if you will. the defining moment of this existence for me. death. I am going to face the great unknown. there is nothing left for me here in this alien world. I do not belong here any more.

I do not fear death - 6/10/2008

here is the deal. I am void. I know I am supposed to feel emotion, but I don't. occasionally, I may get a chemical feeling such as adrenaline or fatigue. that pretty much sums it up. i feel very calculating. i am supposed to have something called love. but I can not feel it. I am supposed to "care" but I don't. this dream world which i am trapped in holds less and less gravity on me as time goes on. it is very much like when i realized the spiritual feelings i was supposed to have (according to my religious upbringing) did not exist, but for everything.

It is difficult for me to repost these or think about what it felt like during that time, but I feel it is absolutely necessary to do so.. to revisit that self and understand it in this way.

Accepting my father for the first time

Today (father's day) I fully dropped the idea I have held on to for so long that it was the religion that was the root cause of what was wrong throughout my childhood/adolescence. I can see how I blamed it on principle, just as part of my nature, on the areas that I did see it affect me, lost in smaller details. Never before have I seen the big picture.

I fully see now that it was the combination of my personality/needs/traits, the overall circumstances of having lost my parent (at age 9), and his overall inability to do social/emotional involvement. I feel "sad" in a calculated way... like he's just lost and I want to figure out how to help him. I told him I accept him and I wanted to be forgiven for rejecting him for the past years.

I ponder how incredibly different life could have been for me and him had she not died... she would have provided an emotional adhesive that we both desperately needed.

When he or I say "I love you" that's calculated. Love is something we *do*, not something we feel. We are loyal and willing to contribute whatever we can.. we just have an emotional "cup" where most people have a bucket or industrial-size mixing vat. We have on/off switches for anger/joy where most people have a dynamically sliding scale of emotion they can sense/repair in others and that they feel in response to events/consequences and can communicate dynamically with non-verbal communication.

The HFA/asperger's explains EVERYTHING. Ethics and ultimately his choice to be religious is simply tied to who he is. Spectrum individuals tend to build a rigid morality and a sense of self based on the abstraction of that morality. This is exactly me, but I simply chose a solitary morality where I couldn't handle the social complexity of religion. I've abstracted myself to the absolute limit of abstraction. I see how I went down this path as a direct result of my relative walking alone. So I chose different ethics. In addition, I was unable to feel any of the "spiritual" impact that most religious people live by. I disengaged naturally from the idea of religion since I never experienced those emotions.

There's no good way to compare what different individuals view as ethical.. at the most abstract level the individual's choice of what to believe in about mortality and other complex issues like chastity is best worked out as what really fits comfortably for themselves.

I can't condemn him any longer for those abstract beliefs that I realize are at the core of who he is. There will always be the "political battle" between those of different ethics because they are fighting for what they feel are the rights of everyone. I think that freethought/freedom in generally has a tenacity to prevail and enhance the overall unity of the human race over time. Even with LDS thought itself, progress has been evident in equality and freedom. I think some aspects of it are still troubled in this category and this is the main reason I felt it was a bit harmful to me growing up.

I believe that my death will result in my no longer being aware I was ever alive, total destruction of the self. I simply feel that's the most feasible outcome... Any other is far too fantastical for me to grasp. The fact of our existence as it is is a cosmic inevitability and is equally fantastic to me. My father believes he will go to an afterlife where he can be with his true love again. I think I hated him for this belief for the past 8 years or so. I feel a calculated shame about this, now... But I'm not sure how I could have avoided this attitude, as I felt so betrayed when I initially began to reject religious thought at about age 18, when my self-lucidity really began to form.

Couple thoughts about adulthood and adaptation

The reason why diagnosis on adults has been more nebulous is that a lot of the traits are merely well-adapted to by adulthood. so only the truest experts have been able to determine how to approach adult diagnosis.

Beyond just looking at controllable encounters to intellectually develop a controllable response, how does one approach things in the "core" of one's personality that aren't actionable? How would I approach vicariously feeling what someone else is feeling so I can detect when it would be a good idea to use emotion-repairing strategies or when it would be over-reacting? A big part of the issue is not sensing the signals that most people would intuitively (without conscious deliberation), which throws you off in any unfamiliar scenario.

The symptoms I've grown out of are both explained by increased self-awareness
1. Picky eating - I still am considered picky by most. The difference is that I perceive I only feel like eating certain things at any given time. I've only just recently noticed how I do this, sort of auditioning food in my thoughts. I make sure to eat those things that I feel like eating instead of trying to force myself to eat something I won't be able to. I have a set of preferred foods I stick to, making shifts from time to time (as my tolerance tends to break down. Suddenly one day I just cannot eat what I have been recently).
2. Impulsiveness - This I view as a natural part of my adolescence. I've noticed the older I've gotten that I always get lost on focused details. My lack of big picture perspective throughout childhood explained most of my out-of-control behaviors. As I now see a longer view of my own personality, I've become more baseline, in control of the actions I choose, and more often finding myself the opposite of restless-- but come across very calculating, even intimidating to some. I've become such that I simply avoid action when I can.

Authority

I've noticed in our current socially organized society, authority figures are hardly ever able to be held accountable... there's no protection for the common person subject to these various authorities. This is many times worse for someone who doesn't know how to navigate social situations.

Example: my drivers licence was suspended without my knowledge after I'd conceded to pay a no-insurance fine that I couldn't resolve with my insurance company who had screwed up the policy. Apparently in my state they also suspend your licence if that happens, requiring you to have your insurance carrier send them some ridiculous form certifying you are personally insured, that costs you a fee to them and to the drivers licence department of the state to get re-instated. So despite being insured even prior to the fine, I had to pay a fine and ended up being cited for driving on suspended licence one night when I was stopped for a headlight having gone out.

As a result I went in and pleaded not guilty to driving on suspended licence. They then began to subject me to an endlessly bureaucratic sequence where I'd be required to come back and have other hearings and a trial. I did not know how to navigate this scenario, so I never went back for these additional hearings as the entire proceeding seemed to be absurd and unwinnable, from my perspective as the wrongly accused. In my mind, this entire extension beyond my conceding to the fine was a cruel and unusual punishment, as without the permission to drive, it was essentially a prohibition against my entire livelihood as a person without any social connections to obtain carpooling or other means of travel to be employed. This state would rather I be unemployed and unable to contribute to society than accept my payment of the fine I was issued as full restitution for the supposed offense? How does this completely disabling penalty fit the actual original offense? They might as well just have thrown me into jail upon being stopped without my proof of insurance.

To date this remains unresolved for me. They have a "warrant" which gives them the right to arrest me and also deny me any tax refund that I'm owed, instead keeping it as "bail". However no one ever seems to take up the warrant and come take me to jail. I'm content with taking no further action, as I am not going to give these idiotic bureaucrats a valid reason to stop me out on the road, and anyway I don't drive like a maniac like every other inhabitant of this zealously insane state. The only way I can see it coming to a further negative outcome is if someone crashes into me, resulting in police involvement and likely discover of the circumstances.

• Ultimately I've come to the feeling that the current laws exist mostly just as a source of income to the state, and aren't interested in being reasonable or fair. Most people just pay and comply, and it goes on and on like that. The state gets to choose what and when to enforce, and doesn't really care most times about speeding but can of course choose to stop someone on speeding when they feel like it to extract a fee from them.

About the failure of labels

Essentially, any label, be it "professionally diagnosed" / "Self-diagnosed" / "undiagnosed" is just a simplification... none of them are adequate in the exploration of the human traits.

Diagnosis is just what the outside uses to describe what they feel to be "clinically significant".

If they feel someone is "different enough" then a diagnosis is made.
It's just a tool that bureaucratic society needs to properly "control" the situation of people being different. I think of it like the "minority" label. It's just pointless, except in the scope of how society chooses to deal with differences.

Any reasonable person who is actually searching for real self improvement would be able to seek it by becoming acquainted with the FACTS published by known experts, as well as the experiences of others, and would be able to leverage their own reason to avoid using traits/labels as excuses for stupid behavior. Instead of making excuses for exclusion or self-stagnation they would be able to learn and grow wiser about themselves.

I think the label self-diagnosed is particularly stupid, as stupid really as the idea of clinically diagnosed. If you have traits, you have traits. No one can tell you who you are but your own self.

Not all of us who have these traits had the opportunity to have good support while growing up. I'd imagine most coming here now who are undiagnosed but recognize the essential traits are seeking to learn from the community who have had that type of perspective, the kind of self-lucidity required to really learn effective strategies. We're just barely gaining that level of lucidity. It's likely we were misdiagnosed and harshly misunderstood throughout life to this point.

Repost 6/15/09 - An intro, of sorts, to my childhood years

On my left wrist, topside, I have 3 scars. They run roughly perpendicular.

I was around 10. That night I simply decided I would cut myself with my boyscout pocket knife I had recently acquired. It was late. My stepbrother was gone, I think from having snuck out the bedroom window. The light was on. Perhaps I had been awakened, or wasn't even asleep before he got up to sneak out.

I had not pre-meditated this or witnessed any example of such an action in others at that point in my life. The largest scar is from is the first cut.


I remember opening the blade, and setting it in position, then pushing down as hard as I could till I was feeling the sting along with the hard pressure to my bone.

I remember how the blood started to seep out.

It was at first very slow. I believe this must have been when I made the other 2 smaller cuts above and below this first. I do not have any recollection of those moments.


I think I started to panic when the blood from the first had finally become significant. I wiped it with a towel, but the blood reappeared twice as much and twice as fast. It would not stop so I was forced to report to my step-parent for help. That part is a very vague recollection. I believe I was met with anger and hostility as my wounds were tended. No comfort whatsoever.

The "me" of that time, a passive participant in my own identity at that point, had no idea why I was doing it, really.

Back then, I had no way to understand what was happening.
Back then, I took this action, with no idea who I was at that moment or who I was to become.
Back then, I had no way to understand the pain inside me, much less even begin to be capable of communicating it, even to my own self.

It was almost like reverse time travel.... I noticed the scars a few days ago and it hit me pretty hard.

Now, I understand it completely.
Now, I see the result, I see who I am.
Now I see how my identity truly began with this event.

I never recognized a tangible origin before this realization. It felt like my childhood was nothing but a nightmare I'd woken up from all of a sudden... A meaningless series of painful occurrences. As meaningless at least as my sudden liberation was in the face of the massive damage I'd sustained from the combined loss, neglect, abuse, and brainwashing that made up my 18 initial years of mortal existence.

This realization has allowed me to recognize the fact that I DID in some way realize the wrongness of everything that had happened to me. It allows me to forgive that child self for any perceived failure or fault in the despairs I faced. I can now properly place the blame squarely where it belongs, on my negligently selfish and delusionally corrupt father.

Final remarks:
What prompted this writing is that I've been going through a micro-relapse of related depression that I am fighting with. I recalled that last year I had another micro-relapse and some suicidal ideations. After writing this, another thought occurred to me... What if I had made the cuts vertically on the inside of the wrist, and just bled out? I think that me wanted to die. I was simply too mentally immature to understand that desire or plan it in any way. What if I had?