I am afraid to tell you who I really am

There is a fear in me. I am grabbing the old journals off the shelf. I have kept them in a box. After hearing the results of my assessment for Asperger's I crawled under the stairs and dragged them out. It is painful to me to remember the rawness of my pain as a young mother married to a very young man who eventually betrayed my trust; destroyed who I thought I had become. My Asperger's made me very vulnerable.

I had drifted through school, looking at my feet in the hallways, doing my work in class, finding it quite boring. Most of my friends lived in different cities and never knew the same "Sue"that people in my hometown knew. They only knew the "Roller Skater" or the "Skipper of Ski Lessons" or the "Concordia College French Camper" or the "AAer" (You can't throw a stick at someone aged 43-49 in Minneapolis without hitting someone who has been through drug treatment as a teen) . They didn't know the shameful Sue that went to school at South St. Paul, a meat packing town.

I graduated early to escape the terror of high school. I didn't eat for a whole quarter at the U of W, River Falls because I was too afraid of the cafeteria. The Resident Assistant knocked on my door the during orientation week. "We are having a party in the common room tonight!" she said cheerfully, "You cannot come because you are only 16 and we will be serving beer, sorry!"

A young man in my math class showed me some kindness, he eventually seduced me. I got pregnant. When I told him, he said he had never left his girlfriend, I was on my own. I knew and actually hung out with his girlfriend. When she found out, she beat me. She broke my glasses and I curled up in a ball on the floor as she kicked me. I lost the baby. Not because of the assault, I guess it is kinda normal for women to miscarry their first child.

I met my first husband, Cris, at a party in Stillwater. Most of my diaries are about him. He was a high school junior; I, a college freshman. An ex-girlfriend had invited him to the party. We were acquainted. She knew "AA Sue"; the "AA Sue" that slept with every boy in our group. She saw me. Later I learned that she took him aside and told him to stay away from me. Of course, that had the exact opposite affect.

On winter break at home, I told a psychiatrist I had been lying to for 2 years the truth. He listened quietly as I revealed myself. He was bouncing his Birkenstock clog on his left foot. When I was done, and asked for help for the first time. He announced, "I never promised you confidentiality" and called my parents into the room. He listed the embarrassing truths I had revealed. Ordered them to bring me home and kick me out.

I gathered my things in a pillow case. My friend across the street gave me five dollars. I took a bus to Stillwater, then Bayport. I knocked on Cris's door.

I have lived my life deeply ashamed of my over sexualized adolescence. I believed as a young teenager that if a boy had sex with you that they must like you, even if there were four boys waiting for their chance in the next room. Marrying young made me feel that I had a found that one that "loved" me. Although marrying young is almost a recipe for divorce, as an Aspergian, I would have followed him to the end of the world. He had other plans.