Mental or nervous breakdowns (part 1).

This can be a very touchy subject for some people.  When a person with Aspergers has a nervous breakdown, it can be stressful for all people involved.  Granted the person that the Aspie has snapped at will feel scared and hurt, and the Aspie will typically act like nothing ever happened afterwards.  I know this, as it happened to me many times in my life.  I am writing my own memoirs as we speak, but I will share a story from that book from when I was 12 years old.  Sometimes the smallest thing can make a person just lose control and get angry with someone else.
It all happened on the playground at recess time.  I was in Grade 7 at the time, and I was playing with other classmates on the tarmac near the gymnasium entrance of the school.  I can't remember what was said to me, but I do recall I was being teased a little bit by these classmates.  The ones doing this were friends, and I was surprisingly able to take the joke, but I put them in a side headlock and we just playfully fought.  One classmate came from behind at me and hit me in the nose and it stung me.  I am not certain whether he meant to do this or if they were playing around too.  Ignoring the fact that he was eating or had food in his mouth, I went at him in a fit of rage and put him in a headlock choking the life out of him.  One of my classmates screamed at me "his face is going blue, let him go."  I did, but more or less just threw him to the ground.  Someone said I kicked him while he was down, but I don't remember.  I do remember a whimper after I threw him down, and then he went silent. 
After being yelled at by other classmates and being told things like "how could you do such a thing?" and "you're a terrible person"  I probably went into after breakdown mode.  My feelings were now getting hurt.  I could not comprehend what I just did either.  I remember going inside the school and throwing a couple things around in there as well, in front of the school's principal.  I was put inside the office alone to calm down.  Once it finally dawned on me what was really going on, I started to cry and cry uncontrollably.  After another half hour, I was told that I would be suspended for three days of school.  The funny thing is that there was one more week of school before the two week Christmas break, so the three day suspension didn't seem long enough in anyone's mind.  The other classmate was slow to regain consciousness and he too would miss the next week of school.
This caused so much stress on everyone that witnessed the event, the principal in the school who had to deal with what could have been a murder on her own schoolyard, the shock of what some other classmates had witnessed, my parents having to leave work early to come get me from school, and then having to leave work on other days to take me for therapy and counseling sessions, and of course the family of the victim.  It is my understanding that the victim's family debated whether they should press charges or not.  I don't know what made them decide not too, but my family and myself were grateful for that decision.
If you think that I acted like nothing happened, this was not one of those scenarios.  I eventually learned what remorse is, and I had to live remorsefully for a long time.  Of course I got reminded every single day by my parents.  It even got to the point where my older brother decided to stick up for me and tell my parents to stop because my depression started to sink lower than my brother could handle.  The teachers and the principal at the school felt that not reminding me about it was the best option. 

I never lived this down for a long time, and this was one of my most traumatic moments.  This incident serves as a reminder to me how much damage I could possibly do when I have a nervous breakdown, and my breakdowns now become farther and fewer in between.  So my message to other Aspies and family of Aspies is this:
If you ever sense a breakdown coming, remember this story.  After the destruction is over, chances are their might be crying afterwards.  And remember that Aspies have a tendency to not care who they hurt in these situations whether it is physical or emotional.  I can't tell you what you should do to avoid it, or what to do when it happens, so the rest is up to you.