However, before I say anything more specific, let me tell you that I was NOT diagnosed with Antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy, which falls under that cathegory. My official diagnosis is Asperger´s syndrome with comorbid OCD. However, I lied to get the Asperger´s diagnosis in order to obtain a throughout assessment of my psyche, by which I wanted to prove myself that I was not really "crazy" (by crazy, I meant e.g. having something like schizophrenia or a similar affective illness).
I knew I did not have it but I was so scared that I simply needed reassurance, to see it written on a paper, with a stamp on it. It is not that I did not think that I could not have Asperger´s, as a matter of fact, I did. But some things in it just were not right, and in these specific cases, I lied in order to appear wholly autistic (if you know how I mean it). I am sure that I had something like that as a kid, and that was why I based my guess or tip on it, which was why I finally went to see a professional to confirm that diagnosis for me. However, you cannot be healed from such a disorder, as it is innate. And so I might have Asperger´s and it got significantly better over the years, or I simply suffer from sometging else that has similar symptoms.
I´ve been searching for what was wrong with me for more than 15 years, and I could never put my finger on it. I simply wanted a label to identify the source of my problem, to get healed from it or at least start treating it, and finally be in peace. Because when you know what is wrong with you, you can easily work with it. And the diagnosis helped me to find that ever-evading peace of mind.
Right now, even if I was re-diagnosed or found out I had something different (which I´ve suspected for years), I would not care that much, because after such a long time (it has really been 15+ years, lads), when I´ve read and analyzed every possible psychiatric book to identify the source of my problems, I have learned how to recognize most mental illnesses or disorders from one another, and so I know which I do and don´t have. I can tell you for sure that I verifiably do have OCD.
However, and this is when it starts getting interesting. I was in my teens when I saw the movie Girl, Interrupted (1999) with Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Clea DuVall and Whoopi Goldberg. It was based on the life story of a young girl, now a famous writer Susanna Kaysen (played by Ryder), who - after she had tried to kill herself in a bout of depression - got in a mental institution and was later diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder. Because I saw some similarity between the character and my actions at that time - apart from the suicidal tendentions - the movie prompted me to dive into psychiatry and research all personality disorders in order to find out what I had.
In the end, after careful reconsidering of what I appeared to have (remember that I gained a much clearer perspective of my actions and thinking over the years), I finally ended up with a few disorders, namely Borderline personality disorder, Narcissistic personality disorder, Antisocial personality disorder, Avoidant personality disorder, and OCD. That does not mean that I am diagnosable with either of these "illnesses" (except from OCD, which I verifiably suffer from), as I only have some traits of each, but the percentage is not negligible, and so I would be diagnosable with the so-called generalized personality disorder, which is a label you get from the specialists when they don´t know where to put you, but know you definitely are somewhere on the "disorder spectrum", so to speak.
Most of all, I am a narcissist, but I am getting better, as the world keeps on slapping me and putting me back in my place - which I realize I need for my improvement, and so I am grateful for it, and not angry like I used to be - and so I am generally getting better. I am also very moody and sometimes depressive, which would speak for the Borderline PD, but at the same time, I learned how not to be clingy, I don´t have suicidal tendencies, and I am definitely not pathologically unsure of who I am as a person.
However, I have recently came back to dive more into the ASPD, as I realized that my whole problem lies somewhere else: I don´t connect with other people. It´s not that I don´t want to, as least not always, but I simply don´t. I have almost no emotional empathy. The character of Sherlock Holmes used to say that if there are several intricate evidences and one simple, we should always choose the simple one because that is our answer. And that very well might be the whole truth, and my greatest problem, after all. The bloody empathy...
... which will be my next article here. That is, unless I choose to write about something lighter first.
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