![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
an epiphany
Jun. 4th, 2008 08:44 amnot necessarily a good one, but an epiphany all the same.
so yesterday morning i was walking into the break room at work and i heard two people talking in their cubes in the cube farm. "yeah, he's really weird. but bright - very bright. just difficult to work with." and my first thought was "asperger's" and my second thought was "i'm very bright. and i'm weird and sometimes difficult. why don't we ever hear about women with asperger's?" and the epiphany broke upon me.
i went back to my desk and i googled women and asperger's. and found that 1 in 5 asperger's diagnoses is for a woman. and that they think the percentage is higher but women (OF COURSE!) are better at masking their behavior. i've been masking my behavior all my life - trying to figure out why what i perceive as the correct action is really not what normal people would do, trying to figure out how other people KNEW what to do when i had no clue. trying (or refusing to try) to understand a hierarchical system that makes what some people say more important than what other people say. trying to deal with people who i knew were wrong but with whom one was not allowed to argue.
i also found a diagnostic test online. i scored 32 which is the low end of aspergers FOR MALES and the mid point for women. how do you get a doctor to diagnose you with something like this in your mid-50s? why even bother? i don't know, but i think i'm going to try. because it suddenly twisted my perception of my whole life. it's not that i was bad, or inattentive, or selfish - it's just that i really do perceive things differently than other people around me.
it doesn't make me unfunctional. it doesn't give me an excuse to stop working at myself - but it does give me an explanation for why i've always been different and seen things differently and never been able to explain it. my mind is full of incident after incident from early childhood on which, when i read about asperger's, are classic examples of that behavior.
but when i was growing up we didn't know about dyslexia, much less something as esoteric as asperger's. and by the time it did become common knowledge (maybe the last ten years?) i'd already come to terms with myself, my perceptions, and my behavior. but STILL - to think that there's actually a defined syndrome for what has always to me been a personal liability, that's a major thing that twists my view of my whole life into a new shape.
so yesterday morning i was walking into the break room at work and i heard two people talking in their cubes in the cube farm. "yeah, he's really weird. but bright - very bright. just difficult to work with." and my first thought was "asperger's" and my second thought was "i'm very bright. and i'm weird and sometimes difficult. why don't we ever hear about women with asperger's?" and the epiphany broke upon me.
i went back to my desk and i googled women and asperger's. and found that 1 in 5 asperger's diagnoses is for a woman. and that they think the percentage is higher but women (OF COURSE!) are better at masking their behavior. i've been masking my behavior all my life - trying to figure out why what i perceive as the correct action is really not what normal people would do, trying to figure out how other people KNEW what to do when i had no clue. trying (or refusing to try) to understand a hierarchical system that makes what some people say more important than what other people say. trying to deal with people who i knew were wrong but with whom one was not allowed to argue.
i also found a diagnostic test online. i scored 32 which is the low end of aspergers FOR MALES and the mid point for women. how do you get a doctor to diagnose you with something like this in your mid-50s? why even bother? i don't know, but i think i'm going to try. because it suddenly twisted my perception of my whole life. it's not that i was bad, or inattentive, or selfish - it's just that i really do perceive things differently than other people around me.
it doesn't make me unfunctional. it doesn't give me an excuse to stop working at myself - but it does give me an explanation for why i've always been different and seen things differently and never been able to explain it. my mind is full of incident after incident from early childhood on which, when i read about asperger's, are classic examples of that behavior.
but when i was growing up we didn't know about dyslexia, much less something as esoteric as asperger's. and by the time it did become common knowledge (maybe the last ten years?) i'd already come to terms with myself, my perceptions, and my behavior. but STILL - to think that there's actually a defined syndrome for what has always to me been a personal liability, that's a major thing that twists my view of my whole life into a new shape.
