Introduction
Hello everyone, my name is Jeremy
Gut and I am a 28 year old man with Aspergers syndrome. I am married to a wonderful woman and have
three beautiful boys; the oldest of the three also has Aspergers. In my school years I was a rather well known individual;
however I lacked friends and was limited mainly due to the way that I treated
other students. I was not a physical
bully but sometimes with my words I did offend or say the wrong things to many
people. I played and lettered in
football and also lettered by throwing shot-put in track. I graduated high school with a 3.7 grade
point average on a scale of 4.0 with my strongest subjects in math, history and
English. Midway through my senior year I
decided to enlist in the military to commence as soon as I graduated and
shipped out one month after graduation.
I am a veteran of the United States Navy, with
many commendations, in which I served honorably and was medically discharged
after three years. Since my discharge
from the Navy I have attained several positions in the workforce, primarily in
the production and manufacturing fields, however most ended on account of my
poor social skills and inability to handle stress and the nonsense of the other
employees. I performed these jobs with
precision and always in a timely manner and usually submitted ideas to improve
proficiency and have a perfect attendance record. Although all of my employers loved my work
ethic it is due to the fact that I am unable to communicate properly and that
does not tend to make me many friends. I
did not realize these acts were unacceptable until recently and have since been
working on the issues.
As
I look back on my life through my childhood, adolescence and adult I realize
now that a lot of the behaviors I possessed were traits of Aspergers. I was never tested as a child because my
parents felt that nothing was wrong, however I see many red flags that should
have been raised and a diagnosis sooner in life would have made it a lot easier
on me today. I was not diagnosed until a
month before my 27th birthday, and the main reason that I had to
seek treatment was because of an argument at work involving another co-worker
and myself and as a means to return to work I had to get documentation of my
condition and seek counseling. My wife,
since our oldest son David’s diagnosis, felt that I carried all of the same
traits of my son and thought that maybe I suffered the condition also and urged
me to seek counseling for a while however I ignored that for nearly two years,
had I listened to her and sought treatment and help sooner that that argument
would have never existed.
With
this writing I intend to point out issues throughout my life from as far back
as I can remember and try to explain why I think now, understanding that I have
Aspergers syndrome, why they were bad behaviors. I will also illustrate how my parents could
have seen the indicators and prepared me better as my wife and me are trying to
do with our son, and also to point out that Aspergers is a good trait to have
but really frustrating to deal with. I
am going to illustrate my struggles through school, sports, the military and my
work life and ways that I could have handled them better knowing now what I
should have known then. I hope some of
this information may be useful to others and I hope that you will enjoy what
you read.
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