So, I’ve had this here blog thing less than a week, and my mom found it. I’m not sure if she’s still reading it, or if it was a one-time read-through, revlusion/horror/sadness sort of deal, because I haven’t posted since she told me–for fuck’s sake, I’d barely had a chance to make a dent in my own bandwidth yet anyway. (Though I have gotten spammed. Twice.)

The funny thing is, I was brainstorming a post on how to approach her on the subject–my last few attempts have been rebuffed, so I wasn’t feeling so great about it–of Asperger’s, and me, and my seeing a professional. I was even considering a series of posts about the process of coming out aspie, and how it’s similar, and not, to coming out queer (something I have experience with already), and how other adults on the spectrum I admire have handled it.

This is not the first time my mom has found me on the intarwebs, nor is it the first time I’ve felt mildly violated by her actions; when pressed to tell me how she finds me, she hasn’t ever given a satisfactory answer, and claims she just likes to know what I’m up to. For a while, I left comments directed TO her in posts I made on various Gawker Media sites (mostly Jez), knowing she might be lurking and reading, and knowing she knew this made me profoundly uncomfortable. I was under the impression that this had ended after she yelled at me a few months ago for “saying mean things about her on the internet” (which, I’m sorry to say, is the perogative of all children with internet access), and my telling her to back off. However, one of the only places I can think of that she might have gotten this link would be my profile on any of the Gawker Media sites, which means she’s still checking up on me. I am trying not to be upset over that part, because she has said that she is hurt that I didn’t tell her, feels shut out, and feels like I might blame her for all of this.

So. I know my mom, and I know now, for sure, that she probably would not stop reading even if I explicitly asked her not to–and I haven’t, yet. I must assume that she is reading.

Asperger’s syndrome is a neurological disorder; it is probably genetic (there are a ton of genes that are potentially causal for any given person, and they may be de novo or inherited mutations) with some posssibility of influence from outside sources like the uterine environment; it is non-degenerative. It is currently diagnosed at a rate of 10 boys to every 1 girl, while there are 4 boys for every 1 girl diagnosed across the whole autism spectrum; this is, in my opinion, probably due to girls with Asperger’s being capable enough of masking their symptoms that they never seek out help or are brought in for help by their parents (girls are socialized towards many aspie traits–introversion in a teenage girl may be less worrying than in a teenage boy–and their interests are often more socially normative, even if the intensity is not). With support from family and friends, there is no reason a person with Asperger’s can’t have the same sort of achievements anyone else can–if that’s what he or she wants. My goals have not changed: I still intend to do my premeds, go to med school, and have kids.

By my own assessment, and the agreement of the therapist, I am a very borderline case. There is a grey area where the most socially functional persons on the autism spectrum meet the least socially functional persons NOT on the spectrum, where a diagnosis is very difficult to make. Ultimately, though, I know me better than anyone else (actually, Kit may know me just as well), and I appreciate her trust in my confidence on which side of the line I fall. It was a difficult conclusion, the work of 2 years of personal searching, to make, and meant a lot to me to be trusted, as the first therapist I saw for this very much did not trust me.

My goals are the same, it’s not degenerative, it’s an extremely mild case…why did I seek out confirmation, then? Because I want access to support groups, although currently the closest one that isn’t for parents of little kids is in Richmond. Because I enjoy being told I’m right, a feeling my mother should be intimately familiar with. Because I want help with my preference for nothing changing, and to get therapy paid for by insurance means having some sort of diagnosis on my paperwork–and if it’s going to be A diagnosis, I want it to be the RIGHT one.