Me and Asperger

In my mid-twenties I happened to read about the Asperger Syndrome for the first time. And it was like an epiphany for me. Hey, that's me! But, wait, it's a form of autism? I'm autistic?
I learned that many Aspies have a hard time getting a diagnosis, because it is not as extremely showing as autism. It is more like you appear as a nerd.
And even I have sometimes problems understanding what is still "normal" (NT = neurotypical) and what is already autistic behaviour?
Coming home from school and not wanting to talk at all to your mother, just needing to relax from all the stress - isn't that normal behaviour?
Not being a fan of small talk or being shy in general - that can be normal too, right?

I don't have an official diagnose. And I probably will never get one. I don't really care (well, sometimes I do). I tried once to get one. I had written a long list with all the things I thought would classify me as an aspie, and then I went to a psychologist. He made some tests with me, an intelligence test which consisted of a few questions of general knowledge (how many kilometer between Berlin and Paris?), and some reaction- and attention-tests. I can remember I was extraordinary good in one test where you had to focus extremely.
Anyway. I don't know if this afternoon appointment qualifies as a test for Asperger Syndrome. In the end he told me it was unlikely that I have it. Point is: I never showed him my beautifully written list (I was too shy) and I kept pretty good eye contact with him (hey, even as an aspie you can learn that!).

So I can't claim here to be a diagnosed aspie but I know a lot of people don't have a diagnosis.
I can just tell you my list of why I think it could be (and some of the items are not that extreme anymore, or have even vanished).

• I had and sometimes still have problems to keep eye contact. Especially if I don't like the other person. I even have problems looking some family members in the eye. It has gotten better of course, because you learn it, but I still have this feeling that it is a very intimate thing to look into the eyes of another person. (I read once that autists don't look at other persons because their sensory system gives them too much information or pictures about the faces of the other persons that they cannot handle that). 
• When walking on the street I don't look at other people (right now I am living in a very small village so I HAVE to look at the other people because everybody knows me and I know them and it is common to greet each other. It's nothing I enjoy though). I once saw a video from an autist explaining that he doesn't see other people when he drives a car. People are for him just moving objects. My grandparents have also told me that as a child I have always been walking around with my head down.
• I didn't want to play much with children of my age. I always wanted to belong to the older kids or even better the adults. When children were at our home for a visit, I preferred to sit with the adults at the table. I had a few friends but I didn't enjoy it much to go to their homes to play, and I so I didn't go often. I'd rather stay in my room.
• I have problems with coordination. I learned to use a simple child swing very late and also how to ride a bicycle. If I felt overwhelmed with a situation I just let me fall on the side with my bike. Even at age 24 I had a bicycle accident because I could not coordinate a situation. Needless to say that I ride very little anymore. Driving a car is similar difficult for me.
• My family often tells me that I have been a VERY quiet child.
• My grandmother told me the story that I immediately cleaned my shoes from the snow that had fallen on them. (It disturbed my order?)
• On photographs you often see me with an empty glare, lost in my own little world

• School photographs were a horror. I look extremely uncomfortable and shy.
• You would have called me a very shy kid (but then again, is it shyness, or is it just the not understanding how to act in social situations?)
• Communication. Geez, what a horror. I never knew what to say, what to talk about. I was bored to death with small talk or just normal conversations. In the class room I felt paralyzed with all the children that were interacting without problems. I didn't know how to behave and just sat quiet without moving. I never said anything, I was so bored and had a hard time focussing. Or other times I was thinking for minutes about how to articulate the perfect answer to the teacher's question (but then it was of course already too late to answer). I have this still today, I think a long time in my head about how to answer a question and by that miss the moment. I always feel like I am acting when I'm in social situations or conversations.
• I not only like being alone, I also need it from time to time, especially when I  had a lot of contacts during the day (when I had been in school the whole morning with so many other people around me, I needed a time-out in the afternoon and could not meet other friends). When I was older I didn't like to go out at night, going to bars or to parties. It sounds strange, but friends are "exhausting" for me, even though I like them and also enjoy the time with them. But it is always hard for me to interact, I always observe a lot and try to learn how to behave, how to react, how to talk. But it is not natural inside of me. I copy a lot other people. When in groups I'm even more lost. When there are more than one conversation, I cannot focus or concentrate. I try to listen to all of them and in the end can't listen to any. I talk even less when in groups. I listen, observe, try to react - but I never act.
• Even when I think I have talked a lot recently, people tell me that I am soooo quiet. What a bummer!
• I really hate talking on the phone. Really. If I could I would not answer the phone at all.
• I have problems focussing on several things at the same time and get angry when I get interrupted while doing something. I would say I am not very spontaneous either.
• I need my rules and routines to feel well. If somebody comes too late to an appointment or changes his/her mind, it makes me a little angry (though I'm much more relaxed about this now). I don't understand why it is so hard to be in time, or why someone can't keep his word. I am not in time for appointment, I am always earlier. I get really nervous and uncomfortable when I seem to come to late.
• When I had friends over in my apartment during university times, I felt uncomfortable, because they were in my comfort zone. They touched my things, changed their position, and used the wrong towel for drying the dishes (Heaven forbid!). Yes, also about that I am much more relaxed now.
• In school I had strict rituals, like leaving the house at 7:16 to have my time to walk around the school, to certain places, and just enjoy the time before all those other loud freaky kids would come
• I showed almost no facial expressure or gestures (that was even written down in one of my school report, besides that I never play with other kids but my long-known friends). Also later when I was somewhere in town and by chance saw my face in a mirror, I was always surprised how little expression I generally show.
• I was bullied for how I look, what I wore, how I behaved. But then again, unfortunately that is not only typical for aspies. Kids can be cruel. But I just didn't understand this cruelty. I didn't do them any harm, why are they mean to me? I thought everybody should be nice. And I was afraid of others which made me an easy victim
• I was horrible at ball games (fits into the "lack of coordination"-category I guess). I just could not estimate how fast a ball would fly to me or where it would land.
• Obsessive behaviour about things I'm interested in and a detailed organisation and systematisation of it (LISTS. I love LISTS. Which brings me to the next point: I love writing lists of anything. SOmetimes to relax me I just make a list of all the actors I can think of. Or movies. And then in alphabetical order. Something like that. I LOVE lists)
• Sometimes I have problems remembering faces, escpecially when I have seen a person only once (gotten better)
• I am pretty good at logic stuff. We had a logic riddle in class one day and I was the first to solve it, way before the others. I also did a lot of these intelligent test books with logical riddles (others than in my asperger test, see above) and generally got easily through them. Not sure though if I could still do it. And on the downside, my memory is terrible.
• I am sensitive to lots of lights, sounds, crowds etc. Living in a big city is stress for me.
• I often act pretty egocentric. As a child I hardly greeted other people, like for example the mother of my friend when I visited them at home. She always complained about me being so impolite. Also sharing is something I do not naturally (which I am pretty ashamed of,  but it is not that I am so greedy, it is mostly that I simply don't think of the possibility.)
• My grandparents often told me that as a child I would talk precocious, or like a professor
• I never had relationships, just affairs (well, actually, now I have a relationship! YAY!). Or I was really really in love with someone, and then (after having been in bed with him, or just without reason) that feeling vanished into thin air and I wondered why I was interested in that guy.
• In those affairs, I sometimes had problems being touched. Not what you think, no, I mean when he wanted to touch my face. I often turned my face away then (because HELLO? Touching the face is sooo intimate and private! F**ing no problem, but touching my face, no way! The same is with kissing. I am not a big fan of kissing, there are just a few times I really enjoy it). Anyway, that man thought I was mean because I turned my face away from him.
• As a child I really hated everything that should be put onto my face, like paint or for games layers of this thick white disgusting nivea creme
• When I met my neighbour with his dog in the hallway I always wanted to greet the dog and ignore the neighbour (sounds funny but is true)
• I have a horrible memory in general, but a pretty good memory for poems (at least as a child) or when playing strategy games (though that might be more related to logical thinking maybe)
• Organisation is a big one for me. I LOVE organisation, making lists (like mentioned above),collecting information and putting it together, making to do lists and planning the days. My lists give me security
• I am often speaking monologes or dialogues in my head (or loud when I am alone). This is kinda my practise for speaking with other persons, improving intonation etc
• I copy a lot from other people, like accents, typical expressions, and gestures (I love gestures btw. I once tried to learn sign language and I would LOVE to just talk with sign language. I often thought that speaking is so exhausting)
• oh yeah, and I love to eat the same every day. At least I have phases where I eat the same stuff every day for months, and then it might change to some other stuff that I eat every day then for the next months...
• in some things I have some weird obsessive behaviours, like when I hear/think/read/write a disease like cancer or something, I HAVE to think or even write NO NO NO, just as a kind of protection against the disease, especially when it was the last word I had been writing. I cannot stop writing then, I first have to write NO NO NO or something similar.(Ugh, it sounds so awkward)

That's all I can think of right now. Sometimes I watch videos from other aspies and then I notice another similarity which I hadn't thought about before.

Here are some online tests I did (in german) with pretty Aspie-typical results, too:
This one can be found under http://aspergia.de and is after Simon Baron-Cohen. It is focussing on the EQ (Empathy Quotient) and SQ (Systemizing Quotient). My test result is marked as the big green spot with the white inside (EQ 22, SQ 46). Being a woman has probably made my result not extremely Aspie ;)

Another test is the Aspie-Quiz.
Here my result looked like this:

Dein Aspie-Wert: 131 von 200 (aspie-number 131 of 200)

Dein neurotypischer (nicht-autistischer) Wert: 74 von 200 (neurotypical number 74 of 200)

Du bist sehr wahrscheinlich ein Aspie (you are probably an aspie)

Sometimes I am doing so much better and sometimes it is just as if a wall has fallen down and I am much more autistic (not wanting to speak at all, feeling unable to communicate and just very disconnected from others). But these moments get less and less.

I have read a lot about the possible connection between autism and heavy metal toxicity, especially mercury, and it not only makes sense to me - I also saw improvements after chelating mercury.

But I will talk about that in the section amalgam/autism.

For me today, it is okay to see me as a part of the Asperger-Spectrum. It helped me a lot to understand and it is helpful to know that there are other people thinking similar. I learned how to act, react, talk and go through life, and it is not causing me that much stress anymore. I just also try to be as honest as possible and tell others that I don't like parties, or I simply try to avoid using the telephone a lot.

I feel very independent because I can be alone without problems. But then again, in one video I heard this lovely sentence:

Us Aspies like to be alone, but we don't want to feel alone.

True.

Disclaimer:
I know I don't have an official diagnosis and may not be accepted by other aperger persons when I talk about it as if I see myself as part of the spectrum. What can I do? If I would not feel and see because of so many things, that I somehow belong to it, why would I waste so much time with it?
And I know, some aspies don't see their asperger syndrome as a disease, and they don't support the claim that it can be "healed" like I write it on top of this website. I accept and respect this view, and I can also see that there might be different forms of autism/asperger, like mercury- or genetically induced.
My view at the moment is that the number of autisms are rising. There are LOTS of reports of autism happening in children after vaccinations. There are LOTS of reports from parents treating their autistic children with chelation and supplements and diet and having astounding success. Maybe it is a different form from autism, caused by environmental toxins. But that doesn't make it less autism.
And I myself tend to believe that ALL autism is caused by some sort of toxin (and therefore can be treated and healed. And if not healed, at least improved).
This is my personal opinion though and I don't claim to know all the truth.