Depression

A lot of people get depressed. Depression is the mental illness of the nineties; everyone had it. For someone with AS, it is endemic. For me, and I can only speak for myself, my moods had their ups and downs like everyone else peaks where I was happy and valleys where I was depressed; that is normal for everyone. Half way between the peak and the deepest part of the dip draw a line. I like to call that line sea level as I am a geography nerd. I am willing to bet that most people this holds true. Some people have a higher sea level and others have a lower sea level and some people the peaks are gentle and not very high and the deeps are shallow and wide. I am not sure if I have gentle slopes or steep sided mountains, but I a can tell you that I have very high sea level so that only the tops of the hills are above water and the islands are far apart. I do have suicidal periods and I also have hysterical periods too, but I also have had very long times where I came to terms with that my normal was depressed. I was mostly depressed from grade two, age seven until age age thirty-two. For all of my school period I did not even know that I was depressed because I had nothing to compare it too. I remember that I was happy once for a couple of days when I was twenty-four and the contrast allowed me to realize exactly how bad my depression really was. As the poem goes, "a fish cannot know water until it discovers air.".

What am I depressed. Basically the literature says it best, the AS person looks around and understands at a deep level that he or she is different from everyone else in a very important way and there is nothing that they can do about it and they do not know why. Specifically, in High School and Middle School, children start interacting and getting ready to date. AS people want to do that too, but find it more difficult or impossible. It actually starts sooner. When I was in University I had myLearning Disability analyzed and they determined that it began in grade two for me; early diagnosis of AS is around grade two. The professionals described it as a brick in the foundation of a house that is missing and each brick laid upon it is off center until the house is finished and every brick above the first, are all off. For me my social development started to go off course around this time, well truthfully it might have been awry before then, but it became noticeable then. Let me tell you young kids realize this early and they are well practiced in removing kids that are different from the rest. It is a subtle ostracization, and honestly it comes from both sides.

I am tired. I will try to pick this up again. Needlessly, it can be said depression is a huge theme in my life.