Hello. 41 and didn't know till this year.

Hello.

My name's Steve, I'm 41, and until earlier this year when I was diagnosed with aspergers, I didn't know what it was that... well... made me different, I guess.

When I was a child my mother took me to the doctor because I kept throwing temper tantrums.
I have this memory, as clear as day, of him saying "He's a bit "artistic"" which made no sense to me at all. Why would my being good at drawing and painting have anything to do with anything?
Obviously, he wasn't saying artistic at all.
What I don't get is why my parents never took this on board, and worse... never told me. I can only guess that they didn't actually know what it meant.

So I spent the rest of my childhood not fitting in at school... I had some friends... we were the oddball crowd, I guess.
Home life meanwhile was traumatic, with severe bullying from my father and brother, while my mother was over-protective in the extreme.
There's nothing like contradicting signals from your parents to mess with your perception of your place in the world.

This has been followed by an adulthood that has consisted of jobs where I'd start at the bottom of the ladder and never move up, even after years, and as I watched so many new staff move up, I never understood why (which always stung, as I'm probably above average intelligent). I just didn't seem to have the right face.

In my personal life, I've had girlfriends, and though these relationships tended to be fairly long term, they always seemed to end the same way. It always seemed to me that these women turned out to be crazy, or unreasonable, or shallow, or just plain wrong about everything.

So 5 years ago I met the woman who is now my wife.
She is a teacher and specialises in special needs and behavioural issues. So as you might expect, after a time she started to recognise certain types of behaviour in me.
She's an extremely tolerant and understanding woman, and I think she realised fairly early on that when I was apparently being awkward, insensitive, or even apparently irrational, there was in fact some driving factor behind that.

So she did a bit of research, found some tests, which I did quite gladly, coz I rather enjoy personality tests... and everything seemed to point towards aspergers.
I then looked into the subject myself, and so much of what I read seemed to be speaking of exactly my own experiences, or perceptions.
A visit to a specialist at the mental health department of the local hospital resulted in a positive diagnosis.

So does this diagnosis change my life? Not exactly.
What it does though is make me question my own perspective when dealing with people... especially my wife.

Until now, I've gone through life feeling like I'm on the wrong planet (the name of that other forum is not lost on me). It has always felt like everyone else was stupid, and just didn't understand how things were supposed to be done, or how they should act.
It always seemed like everyone was cruel or aggressive, and just couldn't handle a person who had the nerve to speak his mind.

What I have learned is that actually, everyone else isn't stupid, crazy or mean... they just share a perspective (and, it feels like, a set of unspoken social rules) that I am not privy to.

What makes things tricky is that it isn't at all obvious that I have aspergers.
I make eye contact, I intonate when speaking, I'm creative, I suck at maths.. so many things that people (wrongly) think are key signs of aspergers, are all missing in me. Only my wife and sister know, and even my sister took some convincing.
So when I invariably get something wrong and put my foot in my mouth, knowing I am intelligent, people assume I am intending to be offensive or insensitive.

However, I choose not to be open about having aspergers, as I'd rather be seen as just a bit eccentric or awkward, than to have this big label (that most people don't understand anyway) pinned to me. I just can't be bothered with the hassle of having to explain it to people who either don't know the first thing about it, or just plain don't believe it.

I could go on for hours, but ultimately, at 41, I'm only just starting to understand why I am as I am,... and it's a very refreshing experience.