Lately I’ve been feeling stressed out. I don’t know who to talk to, where to turn. And on top of it I’m caught up in major confrontation issues, which I hate dealing with.

Then I start rereading old Penelope Trunk posts, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to be tested for Asperger’s syndrome. So since I’m in Maine I confess to my sister that due to my intake in psychology courses I’ve started self-diagnosis (not uncommon in med students). But after a two sentence conversation she changes it. As per usual…we never seem to be able to have actual conversations just enough for her to think she really understands me. Then be blown off and go back to pretending we are close.

So now I’ve convinced myself that after “failing” two different diagnosis test that maybe I should talk to a real medical person and ask them to tell me what’s wrong.

But knowing me, I’m problem just finding something problematic to focus on so I can stop thinking about everything going on with school.

• I’ve never been good with social situations. I usually freak out and hide when friends ask me to go to parties with them. I slowly shut down before being dragged off to a bar. I’ll put up a fight just so I won’t have to go through with meeting new people. Or if I can, I just find a reason to cancel and stay home to read.
• It gets better, I can’t read nonverbal cues. If someone is bored with me I have no idea. And I can’t tell if I’ve upset someone. So sometimes I don’t talk at all because I don’t know if I should. And sometimes I can’t stop talking for fear I’ve already said something wrong so now I need to cover it up. And other times I won’t talk and I’ll just watch the entire group have a conversation, not understanding how they are able to keep the conversation funny…and oh was that a joke? After a while I just start spacing out wondering what my next post will be about.
• I hate when people think I’m weird. I’m not weird. I just get lost in my thoughts, a lot. Writing is the only way I can really explain what happens, because when I start talking I can’t stop. But sometimes that happens in my writing too. I call it word vomit.
• And I get really frustrated when people don’t tell me exactly what they want. I’m really bad with reading between the lines. By ignoring me you aren’t making me more interested, you’re actually making me so frustrated that I stop caring. And the only reason I continue to talk to you is because I genuinely just want to know why you stopped. Not for emotional reasons, but because I don’t understand why someone would stop wanting to talk to me. Well I have an idea, but I like exact reasons.

I don’t understand why people are just able to fall in line with dating rules/life rules. I find them so complicated and I’d rather not do any kind of dance, I’d rather someone just be blunt with me so I know exactly what they are thinking. Instead of having to worry about if I just said something wrong and by then you are already on another topic but I can’t focus on what you are saying because I am still trying to figure out if you are upset.

I’ve always felt like this, and I just never really thought anything of it until my abnormal psychology class/googling on a cloudy day led me to believe that I could be more different than I already am. But, Like I’ve said before, I’m a big over analyzer and I sometimes get so involved with what is going on I need to start searching for a cause of some abnormal behavior. That is, in all likely hood, completely normal but it just happens to be showing itself at an inconvenient time.

So I realize that I am just reading into behavior that is perfectly normal, and I also understand that because of certain things happening I am trying to focus on other things. But I still can’t help but think that maybe there is an explination for why I am the way I am.