Asperger's and Independent Living

People with Asperger's tend to have trouble with independent living. They will either have to live with someone all of their lives or go through assisted living training from a life coach or something in order to get good enough practice to live on their own successfully. Some succeed, others fail, but it is the effort that actually counts.

In my case, I've lived with my parents my whole breathing life. I have never wanted to leave simply because everything works and it is extremely convenient. I try to help out when I can, I complain a lot but thats because my brain messes up and I get frustrated so I lash out. I pretty much have paid for everything I own with my own money, except for Christmas presents given to me by others. I have never been able to hold down a job, but I have made it work by finding ways to make money, whether it be an online business, or writing articles. I live a quiet life, and I prefer it that way.

I haven't had success in relationships because I do not settle. I don't have the luxuries that other people have. I do not have my own car, I do not pay car insurance, and I do not have a real job. I have nothing to offer a female other than my sharp wit and sense of humor. It takes an awesome female to look past materialism and just go for the person for who they truly are.

I have no understanding of paying bills, or life insurance or anything of those means. I just wake up every day, live my life, go about my daily routine and just make things happen. I live a care free life and until I move out and get the necessary training required for me to live a healthy independent life, then it will continue at the pace it is at right now. I want a relationship some day and to be able to live in a nice apartment, but I will need money in order to do that which means I will have to be able to get a nice job and show that I can take care of myself. But due to my disability, it sometimes seems like it is not in the cards and that I was not supposed to be like everyone else. I guess that could be a good thing, but then again, I want to be "normal" whatever that means. But now that I think about it, I guess I should be proud of who I am, I'm making the best out of what I currently have, it might not be much, but it works for me. Someone will understand that some day and accept me and also, my life will turn out how it should over time. I just need to be patient.

Asperger's and Lashing Out

I don't know about you, but I tend to just start yelling my butt off at the people I care about most simply because I get frustrated. They never see that though, they just suspect I am just a crazy unhappy person that feels like making others feel bad. That is not it at all, I just get frustrated and the way my brain is wired, I just start yelling at them because i'm so irritated and frustrated, that is the only behavior that will get my point across. I am a mature adult, when your body matures your brain goes along with it, or it should any way. My mind sometimes performs just like a small child, I throw tantrums and try to get attention, and sometimes I interrupt conversations because at that particular moment I think it should be about me. Just like a small child, I get attention the same way they do, through non verbal communication and throwing something. It is not something I'm proud of, but it is the truth. It is probably like that for all "Aspies". Something triggers in your mind that you need to get your point across and thus you only know one way to do it and thats the same way you've been doing it all along.

We do not like change, and whenever something is about to change or someone puts pressure on us to change, it cannot be done and we scatter. We like things the way they are and we want to keep them that way, and when we feel threatened and think our personal world is going to be destroyed, we protect it at all costs. It is just a defense mechanism we have built for ourselves and because of it, we do not get hurt that way, but because we do not seem to feel empathy, we do not worry about getting hurt any way. We just lash out because we care and we want to do better and we are not fans of failure. When we feel as though we are going to fail, the frustration kicks in and we combat it the only way we know how. So apologies to all those friends and family that cared, from all of us in the "Aspie" community, we're sorry, just bare with us. We mean well!

Asperger's and Loneliness

Us with Asperger's Syndrome are always lonely. We cannot help it, it is apart of us, a big part of us. We sometimes find ourselves wondering what went wrong and why no one is around us. That is okay because that is what is supposed to be happening. Neuro typical people usually are the ones that can easily make friends because they can easily communicate with other members of society. Not "Aspies" though, not us. We tend to just have a laid back attitude, only paying attention to what we think is relevant. Due to our restrictive interests and our inability to multi-task, we can only pay attention to what we are interested in at that particular moment in time. Be it building model cars, writing poetry, playing video games, whatever the interest is, it consumes our soul.

We can only pay attention to those things that we are interested in, and because of that, our brains forget that there are other things in life, and since we cannot read emotions very well, we tend to get upset over a sarcastic comment from another person or we shut down when getting overwhelmed and role play as if we are a turtle hiding unto its shell. The whole process of us becoming consumed with whatever we are interested in leaves no time at all for friendships or relationships of any kind. We tend to not think about those things. Sure, we get lonely just like everyone else and long to feel "normal" much like Pinocchio, but sometimes it is just not a reality simply because it was not meant to be one. "Aspies" are lonely and are supposed to be lonely, only the lucky ones manage to get away and disappear from this village and engage in meaningful relationships and fit in with society. We need to work harder than most and it is definitely worth it in the end, but the journey to get there can sometimes be non-existent simply because of our ineptitude to life itself. With hard work things can change, but the script is written and it says, "Aspies can only deal in their own heads". That says it all right there.

Asperger's and Problems Dating

A person with Asperger's tends to not be able to read both sarcasm and sadness well. We will usually end up having to look at the face of a person longer than a usual person would, to read their emotion. I can tell you this much, "Aspies" and their reading ability is suspect at best. We were not created with the ability to understand feelings or emotion that well, it is one of our flaws and will always be one of our flaws. Whenever we will crack a joke or try to make someone laugh, we assume we were funny enough to get a rise out of someone but in actuality, we were not that funny and so they do not laugh and we are left wondering what happened.

When it comes to dating however, not only is it tough to gauge emotion from a female but it is difficult to tell if they like you or not. In my personal experiences, I have always pretty much blown it with women. I always either say something dumb or I overreact to them not talking to me for a few days. I assume by their daily absence, that they do not like me so I end up calling them out on it. I do that with other people too, if someone disagrees with me, I'll get frustrated and lash out and just go crazy for like a whole ten minutes. But on the other side of the coin, I love a healthy debate, so I just cannot figure myself out sometimes. Women can't figure me out and I am sure most other "Aspies" feel the same way. That is why based upon statistics alone, those on the autism spectrum do not do well in relationships and why most of them do not get married. So I can take that as two things, either I will never get married, or I will be one of those rare few who gets to actually make the plunge and live the social life I have always wanted.

Dating is kind of a science, chemistry and biology mixed together with both atoms working as a whole to create something amazing and rich in DNA. Most of the time people are successful at it and other times people are not. It all depends on what you bring to the table and how you set that table. With people on the autism spectrum, social relationships are the hardest things to grasp, all we want is to feel loved and appreciated and feel a sense of normalcy. We will always have that void to fill based upon our limitations and weaknesses with the social game. All it takes is one person to look through your limitations and accept them and then you're on your way to something amazing and what you've always wanted. The lack of recognition of social cues, the overreactions to something minor, that is just how our brains are wired and what we "Aspies" go through. Dating or no dating, either way it is a pretty unique way to go about life. Hopefully one day more and more neurotypicals (regular people in society) recognize that we too are people and that we have something to offer as well. And when we tell you upfront about our disorder and our social limitations you won't hold it against us in an argument and just go with it. That will be the day that we will feel equal and appreciated. Come on women, come on men, everyone likes a unique individual. I know I do, and I'm one of the unique ones.

Asperger's and Hatred!

Most of my adult life I felt severely empty, and I always needed to do something to help fill my emptiness. I almost always chose to ignore everything and just move about my days and weeks as if nothing was going on but I would always feel in the back of my mind that I did feel sorry for myself big time. Throughout junior high and high school I constantly made mistakes and I rubbed people the wrong way. I had girls take advantage of me and make me feel belittled and smaller in stature than I actually was. My "friends" were not actually my true friends simply because they would root against me in fights and for me to beat someone else up on occasion, to me that wasn't really a friend at all. There was always someone who made me feel badly and put me down and never was truly there for me. I was always bad at the social game, be it in romantic relationships and relationships with every single category of person I've come across in my life. I constantly said something or did something that was out of the norm, and people looked at me as if I was a weirdo who didn't know what I was doing and for that I became consistently isolated. It never failed how often that had occurred and how often it had remained the same. Nobody knew that I was considered different in a medical sense because no one asked, and no one thought of it and they just lumped me into the strange category and left it at that. I guess if they found out now they would definitely understand seeing as how we are much older now, but it still would not excuse the behavior and how they had treated me when I was younger. Besides that I feel good about myself and I am still going through the soul searching phase of life, I thought that phase was over but apparently I am still in it. I still feel like people hate me and that feeling will never fade. With that I will just go with things and try not to remember the past because it brings up a lot of negative memories and stresses me out way too much. I need to focus on the future and the now and hopefully people do not look at me as if I am strange any longer and will just befriend me and make me feel as though I am apart of society. That is really all I want and I think I deserve that much at least...Am I right?

Boy Have Things Changed

I remember when I was growing up and being misunderstood by people, I wanted and needed people there for me and I always felt like something was always missing. Be it guidance from someone or some kind of attention, I always felt as though a void was missing from my life. Everyday that had passed I tried to spend those passing days attempting to achieve the missing organism from my life. I would act funny in class to get attention, and do whatever it took to get noticed by girls and the "popular" crowd alike. I always felt different and hated feeling that way so I concentrated on filling the void that was missing. Not until I was an adult, and past my childhood did I realize what exactly I had and before being diagnosed with Asperger's, I had already done a self diagnosis just by researching on the internet. I had been in and out of neurologist's offices all my childhood and constantly had problems with depression. Everyone treated me normally growing up, and because of my siblings I had been treated just like them and that disguised my true self and I would sometimes forget that I had problems. Feeling normal and being treated normal is great therapy for psychological problems. Those times have come and gone though, and I've realized something over the years. Each year more and more money from charities and the government itself has put money into treatment for Autism and you even see advertisements through media of outfits like Autism Speaks! and National Autism Society. With those outfits, more research is put into the cause and the next generation of children will have help with their problems. Well here's my question; What about my problems growing up? What about the people like me and their problems? The help wasn't there, not unil the mid 1990's was there even an inkling of hope or even an idea of Autism in general. It has been very frustrating knowing that I did not have that help growing up, and instead of wasting my time being in and out of neurologist's offices, I could have had the right research done to prevent most of my psychological problems. Do not get me wrong, I love today's children and think they have tons of promise in this world of ours and think they will do some amazing things with all the education resources offered to them nowadays. I just feel as though to be fair for all generations, it never should have taken this long for disorders like this to get noticed or come to fruition. I hope to give back one day and help as best I can based on life experience alone and show the next generation that even though they have problems right now, they'll eventually surpass and things will get better. For right now I'm just venting my frustration and sending a message to the research analysts out there that they should put together more opportunities for adults like me and those that I know. Hopefully this gets the point across, if not, I will keep pulling, like I've always done. Remember, its great therapy to feel a sense of normalcy in this world.