A good old friend from childhood who I haven't seen for years since and who has read a lot about Asperger's recently suggested I may have the condition. Of course it may be just an effect of having read too much on the topic and seeing the condition where it's not. But of course I had to have a look.
Turns out that Asperger in women manifests itself a bit differently than in men, so my prior knowledge had to be reevaluated. I've learned that in women it is often misdiagnosed as borderline (because of the gender bias), or can even lead to borderline, since the kid is confused and not understood by the surroundings. Some things I would never thought are part of some condition, mostly they are weird characteristics of mine that tend to annoy the shit out of people.
Arguments for Asperger's:
  • Having had to imitate social behaviours using my intellect rather than knowing intuitively what to do; not knowing why people behave as they do
  • Confusion about people's intentions and being permanently misunderstood and misunderstanding others
  • Distressed by situations where there's a perceived logical inconsistency, and an urge to demand clarification to resolve the inconsistency before being able to proceed (now that combined with attention to details really annoys people)
  • Having been trying to understand the world before having learned it at school; interested in mathematics, religion and philosophy before I even learned the vocabulary to name it
  • Concentrated on self; egocentric; often labelled selfish
  • Personifying objects - e.g. I feel sad and sorry for a piece of clothing I have to throw away; I imagine it feeling abandoned and say a goodbye phrases in my head to comfort it before I let it out of my hand; I know it's weird
  • Synesthesia - numbers and letters have colours, words have moods, places have sounds.. I see and feel music
  • Seeing connections between things that most people find unrelated; easily seeing patterns, people say I have the tendency to jump to conclusions, but often they get to the same conclusions just in much longer time
  • Not thinking in words (finally I found something on that topic!), but not only in pictures either.. "in emotions" and "in movements" would be the closest, pictures pop up occasionally, but only as a side effect
  • Preparing mentally for events even days in advance, unable to cope with an event without an assigned time when it will happen (someone who is coming to visit me and getting late, saying "just do your stuff" is horrible)
  • Not able to understand some people who make me feel insecure even though I hear them well, or having a blank page in my head when I try to speak or think in their presence (but could also be CPTSD)
  • Since first years fascinated in woodwork.. later sewing clothes and building houses for dolls rather than playing with them, playing drums and ending up as a software developer; never understood games like "let's pretend that leaves are money and you are mum and you are dad", I found them pointless and stupid
  • On parties I'm either silent or extravertly making an idiot out of myself, jus in order to suddenly disappear without saying bye and spending at least half a day recovering in my bed
  • Aversion to make-up, high heels and "being feminine"
  • I don't like shopping (except online :p)
Stuff from childhood:
  • My mum mentioned I've been quite closed and distanced from the surroundings in the first few years of life, to the point that she was worried about my mental health and intellectual capabilities
  • According to my mother after I've learned to talk I would still expect her to know what I think without me speaking or saying what I want
  • In kindergarten and primary school I didn't know I was supposed to talk or interact with other children; such idea just didn't occur to me till a teacher pointed it out
  • Many experiences at school where I just "knew" as opposed to have learned, and I would not be able to explain why I know; I remember this from mathematics
  • Not being able to say "purre" when I was in school (just a speaking block), may have been more of that, not sure now.. I definitely have many times replied "I don't know" or not said anything when I had the answer written with big fat letters in the front of my mind; just couldn't; happens nowadays too
  • Not getting the idea of having a conversation for a long time - who should speak when and about what, and how do people know what to talk about
  • Having talked with the kindergarten teacher when in kindergarten rather than playing with kids, but later usually hanging out with younger people, also having relationships with much younger men
Sensory:
  • Sensitive to certain pitches of sound - I have been once called drama queen for covering my ears in a public concert and running away as the sound was simply painful
  • Irritability at certain sounds, light or smells (I've always thought that it's the result of my strict upbringing), some silent sounds can annoy me more than loud ones; often called over sensitive or paranoid; sensitive to electric current: I feel when some electric devices are not isolated properly when I touch them while other people don't
  • Finding perfume repulsive; though recently I've noticed that few of the expensive ones are bearable
  • Getting close to a panic attack when in a crowd of people
  • Having been been fantasising about being wrapped tight in a blanket as a child; still I like to fall asleep like that
  • Compulsive nail biting, drawing, or singing gibberish or drumming on objects when trying to focus and no one is around
  • Having been fixated on eyes and hair when liked some guy in school; now paying a lot of attention to the smell
Arguments against Asperger's:
  • I'm not shy to join activities but rather jumping into them without much prior thought - although I remember the moment when I learned to do it
  • I don't have good memory for details; I don't have good memory at all.. I don't have good long time memory, rather short time is better.. a capacity to store big amounts of information for a short time (allowed me to get through school with good grades without studying or remembering much)
  • I'm not that hypersensitive or undersensitive to the surrounding world; I mostly feel at ease with the world, as long as it doesn't involve social interactions that confuse me
  • I like touch and I like sex; though I probably can trace back the time when I learned to like it
  • I'm overfocused on the needs of others as opposed to my own, though it's a fact that I rarely get them right
  • I don't like routine, I like to do things spontaneously, often just for the sake of the thrill of having the plans changed last moment
  • I don't have so much need for autostimulation as I saw in other people (meaning the people who tend do make strange uncoordinated movements or sounds for no apparent reason)
  • top-down thinker as opposed to bottom-up (https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/07/05/research-shows-three-distinct-thought-styles-in-people-with-autism)
But yea one theme is visible in many points: many basic skills I had to learn a bit later, or even learn to emulate them, using my intellect rather than acquiring them intuitively. I had to put concentrated effort to learn how to participate in a conversation, or to look people in the eyes when I talk with them, or to express my emotions by adjusting my face expressions. There are things I can now do that I'm proud of and that date to certain age when I finally got it.
Let's list them (in the brackets are approximate ages when I learned it):
  • trusting in my own though process (5)
  • joking with people as a way of bonding and finding stupid jokes funny (11)
  • understood why people have conversations (15)
  • finding a common language with people from any social background (17)
  • being able to imagine the other person as the center of their own universe (18)
  • listening to people (20)
  • making friends (21)
  • taking the initiative (21)
  • being spontaneous (22)
  • not being shy and appearing extrovert when needed (23)
  • being expressive (24)
  • valuing doing sports (25)
  • enjoying sexual interaction (28)
What is still missing on that list:
  • flirting
  • intimacy
  • enjoying being a woman
  • realizing needs and emotions of others without actively analyzing them
  • memory..
I'm not sure if I can ever get the memory part right. My memory is like a NoSQL database, it's just organized differently. It's even more like Cassandra database, with eventual consistency, and even with fuzzy values that are evaluated on the fly using statistical functions. And the similarity function is different than for other people, because I see things being similar that other people would never consider related. For example for some reason it seems fine for people to confuse the word "lose" with the word "loose", but it's not fine to confuse similarly sounding names if you've known the person for some time. What's more some names I find similar that don't sound alike at all, e.g. because they are both of brown colour. Explain that to someone who's pissed that I forgot their name :D
So yeah, regarding empathy deficiency and objectifying people I've been suspecting narcissistic traits in myself, but in the end I often felt that they are part of how my brain is built rather than the way in which it functions. Isn't it exactly the difference between the borderline and Asperger's? As yes, the more I dig into myself the more I see that there's another wall.. Is it just another emotional wall that can be torn down or did I reach the biological basics of my brain? The time will tell..
Asperger's would explain the memories of my parents being irritated or upset with me, that could sound like emotional abuse in case of a normal child, but what if it was justified? Stuff like:
  • "I can't look at you, stop making that retarded face"
  • "You're so clumsy it's funny"
  • "Stop thinking so much or your head will become a TV"
  • "I wish you could sometimes hug me and say you love me"
  • "Do you love me?"
  • "I can't possibly know what you're thinking if you don't tell me, I'm not a mindreader"
  • "You always answer 'I don't know', do you even know if you are?!"
  • "Stop wobbling you look like a retard!"
  • "She's quite slow"
  • "She's good at making herself invisible"
  • "She's a mysterious child"
  • "She's weird"
  • "She's mentally ill"
Indeed I was a very different child than the adult I am now. I read that for women it happens really often that they learn to emulate social skills fast enough and as the result they never get diagnosed. I tend not to put too much importance on the weird child I've been, but maybe I should. It's just another reference point that changes the meaning of all the research I've done so far, and explains how I could end up with a CPTSD without an objective major pathology in my family. If I really had Asperger's it would be quite fascinating how much I was able to learn! So maybe it's fascinating in any case, even if I don't have Asperger's - in the end I did have all those deficiencies as a child and I've worked my way out of many of them.