Odd Aspie Out
by An adult with Asperger’s Syndrome further discusses his struggles fitting in with the world, being bullied in it as a child, and ostracized from it as an adult.
On the surface, this may seem like a self-pitying, whining, woe-is-me tome, a forty-year-old loser with no lucrative career, income, or a decent amount of money who is still supported by his mother and doesn’t know how to drive a car, which is almost literal retardation in Southern California, where I live. This article may seem at first glance a mere rambling by someone who blames the world and everyone in it for all his troubles and failures.
Though some people will think as such after reading this, I feel that would be an incorrect description.
This is not intended to be self-pitying, whining, or woe-is-me, nor is it intended to coerce anyone into feeling sorry for me. This is intended as a person with a disability – Asperger’s Syndrome – describing his sufferings and struggles with a world that he feels he does not in, and his ostracism from it; a world that, in his view, clearly seems to exclude him from the milestones that it has to offer.
I believe that I can write about this disability and the experiences that go along with it, because the person describing his sufferings and struggles in the world due to this condition is me.
Before continuing, a definition of Asperger’s Syndrome is certainly in order:
A high-functioning form of autism that negatively affects social interaction. As part of the autism spectrum, characteristics of this disorder include difficulty making friends, obsession with different topics and subjects, not understanding that other people have beliefs and opinions different than one’s own, saying inappropriate things without realizing it, and in my case, talking to myself and reacting badly when I feel others are unnecessarily picking on me or treating me like a lesser being.
Putting it differently, “Aspies” are generally seen as a little strange. Sometimes they are seen by others as extremely strange. As one of the 20 million people with Asperger’s worldwide, I am definitely no exception.
Bullied in elementary and junior high school, ostracized in high school, and after a reprieve with modest social success in college (and even then I was rejected and ostracized by a number of people), rejected in the workforce, my experiences with this condition has definitely rendered me as an “odd aspie out”.
What I was unaware of throughout my life, until much later on, was that in the world of children and adolescence, different equals bad. Different equals dorky. Different equals derision. Different equals social rejection, and in many ways I was as different as one could get.
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Post CommentAnonymous
On June 23, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Hello. I wanted to thank you so much for posting your story!
I too am Asperger’s, and biracial. I am also an adult, and I am dealing with the same kind of struggles that you are dealing with. I agree with you that being a minority and having something such as; Asperger’s can be very diffucult. Especially if you’re an African American. I have come to realize, that not too many African Amerian are very educated on this particular disorder, more than whites are. Especially in this era. There is a movie out called, “If Only You Could Say It In Words”, that was directed by Nicholas Gray. It is a film about an African American who grows up being undiagnosed with Asperger’s. I have not seen it myself, but it’s definitely worth something.
Rob
On February 19, 2010 at 10:57 am
I enjoyed your story. I have AS too, but am white. I’m 4 years younger than you (by your story). I struggled a lot. I have overcome and am still overcoming a personality disorder, anxiety issues, and now I’m working on PTSD for issues I didn’t even know I had at the time, LOL. 7 years of therapy so far. Before getting therapy, I struggled and missed lots of opportunities, like you said. Therapy requires so much effort from me, but what alternative do I have? I had to realize that nobody’s offering real help, but my therapist slows it down and feeds it to me a little at a time, so he’s patient, and lets me deal with it. He’s flexible in changing everything into a cerebral statement, where I can understand it better. Like you said though, young adulthood brought a respite for some reason. I was lucky to have met a woman during college that I later married. She is the one that pushed me to go to therapy, and it’s been a struggle for her too. I’m glad that she is so caring. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that the way I understand it, being a target wasn’t your fault. If it wasn’t you, they would have probably found someone else, or else someone would have stepped in to stop them (a bystander). The ostracized you probably because they were afraid of being ostracized and thought they could learn the power of ostracism in the lowest risk way possible of being ostracized themselves, by finding a target they thought had the least ability to put a stop to it: you. The fact that others were using you that way made you more of an attractive target since they were proving they could do it without consequences. IMHO, you are as responsible as a woman asking to be raped. If men were going around raping one another, some men are so afraid they’d rape just to have a taste of what they see as power. In fact, people more likely to rape are those who’ve been raped as children. What I think they’re confused about though is that it was power to begin with. When enough people like you and I live through that successfully, and some of the perpetrators end up jobless, mean, wifebeaters, etc, bystanders start to wonder what’s up and begin to be more likely to step in. They stop buying the bulls&!\ that the bullies are doing a public service by ostracizing the undesirable people, since you’re proving them otherwise. The uglyness gets exposed for what it is. African culture should not be so anti-intellectual and at the same time be crying fowl or pulling the racist card. You make your own bed. People like you are the heros for so many. Keep it up. Get help if you need it.